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.  THE 


EVOLUTION  OF  MAN 

AND 

HIS  MIND. 


» 

A  HISTORY  AND  DISCUSSION  OF  THE  EVOLUTION  AND 

RELATION  OF  THE  MIND  AND  BODY  OF 

MAN  AND  ANIMALS. 


BY  S.  V.  CLEVENGER,  M.   D. 

Author  of  The  Medical  Jurisprudence  of  Insanity,  1898— Spinal  Concussion, 
1889— Comparative  Physiology  and  Pyschology,  1S85— A  Treatise  on 
the  Method  of  Government  Surveying,  1874.      Formerly 
Pathologist  of  the  Chicago  County  Insane  Asy- 
lum and  Medical  Superintendent  of  the 
Illinois  Eastern  Hospital  for  the 
Insane,  Etc.,  Etc. 


CHICAGO. 

EVOLUTION  PUBLISHING  COMPANY. 

70  State  Street. 

1903. 


Copyright  1902  by  Shobal  V.  Clevenger. 
Copyright  1902  by  the  Evolution  Publishing  Co. 


Press  of 
GEO.  K,  HAZLITT  &  CO. 

Chicago. 


PREFACE. 

While  a  civil  engineer  and  government  surveyor  of  public 
lands  the  author  became  familiar  with  the  workings  of  the  land 
and  Indian  bureaus  of  the  interior  department  in  Washington, 
D.  C,  and  incidentally  the  other  offices  of  general,  state  and 
territorial  control,  and  realizing  the  impossibility  of  doing  con- 
scientious work  while  associated  with  the  politicians  who  filled 
most  of  the  places,  in  1873  the  field  of  medicine  wa^  substituted, 
and  after  graduation  a  specialty  was  made  of  nervous  and  mental 
disease.  In  order  to  further  such  studies  the  author  secured  a 
position  as  pathologist  to  the  Chicago  County  Insane  Asylum, 
and  during  three  years'  service  there  and  later  as  superintendent 
of  the  Illinois  Eastern  Hospital  for  the  Insane  he  discovered  that 
the  politics  controlling  such  places  was  inexpressibly  worse  than 
what  he  found  elsewhere.  As  reform  endeavors  availed  nothing, 
a  determination  was  made  to  discover  the  reasons  for  the  too  fre- 
quent brutalities  in  public  charity  institutions,  and  the  apathy  of 
citizens  concerning  them.  The  studies  expanded  into  this  vol- 
ume, passing  far  beyond  their  original  bounds,  but  rigidly  con- 
fined to  this  world,  with  only  incidental  mention  of  anything  be- 
yond ;  though  by  inference  the  earth  is  but  a  small  portion  of  the 
universe. 

Hallam,  in  the  preface  to  his  Literature  of  Europe,  remarks 
that :  "An  author  who  waits  till  all  requisite  materials  are  ac- 
cumulated to  his  hands  is  but  watching  the  stream  that  will  run 
on  forever  and  though  I  am  fully  sensible  that  I  could  have  much 
improved  what  is  now  offered  to  the  public  by  keeping  it  back 


Ivi347322 


IV  PREFACE. 

for  a  longer  time,  I  should  but  then  have  had  to  lament  the  im- 
possibility of  exhausting  my  subject." 

The  author  finds  encouragement  in  thinking  with  Carlyle, 
that:  '*If  a  book  come  from  the  heart  it  will  contrive  to  reach 
other  hearts.  All  art  and  author-craft  are  of  small  account  to 
this." 

70  State  St.,  Chicago,  February,  1903. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  1.— Earliest  Man. 
Successive  glances  are  taken  at  the  conditions  of  our  immediate  and  re- 
mote and  then  still  remoter  ancestry,  until  we  reach  savages  in  the  ice  ages. 
Frankland's  theory  of  a  hot  primeval  sea  and  Le  Conte's  critical  periods  in 
the  course  of  the  earth's  development  afford  some  of  the  bases  upon  which 
are  gradually  built  up  the  earliest  races  of  men,  those  of  the  stone  age, 
the  dwarfs,  the  Turanians,  Africans,  Malays,  etc.  The  non-Aryans  and 
pre-Aryans.  The  bronze  and  iron  ages,  the  hunting,  pastoral  and  farming 
stages  of  race  progress.  The  separate  origin  of  the  different  races,  their 
migrations  and  subsequent  intermixture ;  early  civilization  in  America  be- 
ing regarded  as  indigenous. 

CHAPTER  ll.—The  Aryans. 

The  primitive  Himalaya  range,  the  "Roof  of  the  World,"  from  which 
flows  the  Oxus  river  along  which  was  located  the  legendary  Aryan  para- 
dise whence  the  Aryan  settlers  were  driven  by  floods,  droughts,  savages 
and  sand  storms,  migrating  as  Celts,  Greek-Romans,  Teutons  and  Slavs, 
from  whom  came  the  present  German,  French,  English,  Irish,  Russian  and 
Scandinavian  peoples,  as  well  as  the  Persians  and  high  caste  Hindoos. 

The  growth,  decline  and  extinction  of  tribes  and  nations,  with  the  rise 
of  new  social  organizations  under  various  names. 

CHAPTER  111.— The  Semites. 
Babylonian  civilization  ten  thousand  years  ago,  Hilprecht's  excavations 
in  the  Mesopotamian  valley,  royal  and  mercantile  libraries  being  unearthed 
and  translated  which  were  written  ages  before  the  days  of  Abraham,  The 
Hebrews,  Assyrians,  Phoenicians  and  Egyptians  and  what  Europe  owes  to 
them.  The  Aryan  barbarians  deriving  their  alphabet,  numerals  and  rudi- 
ments of  arts  and  sciences  from  the  Semites. 

CHAPTER  IV.— Middle  Ages. 
The  behavior  of  a  wilderness  full  of  apes  compared  with  the  gluttony, 
rapacity  and  cruelty  of  the  classical  periods.  Slow  evolution  of  ideas  while 
Rome  was  "governed"  by  rulers  who  were  often  insane,  knaves  and  fools. 
A  survey  of  the  period  from  Commodus  to  Conslantine  during  which  sol- 
diers elected  and  murdered  emperors.  The  rise  of  Charlemagne  and  the 
Franks  when  Germanic  civilization  grew  upon  the  ruins  of  Roman  power. 
Monasteries  good  and  bad,  and  schools  and  the  growth  of  ideas  of  free- 
dom in  the  Feudal  peribds  and  during  the  crusades.     The  escape  of  Eng- 


VI  TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

land  through  Magna  Charta  and  the  inheritance  by  America  of  Germanic 
ideas  of  freedom  preserved  in  England  through  the  barons  finding  it  to 
their  interests  to  join  with  the  people  against  the  king. 

French  miseries,  Joan  of  Arc,  the  Gabelle,  the  Bastille,  etc.  The  loss 
by  Germany  through  Romish  corruption  of  the  ideas  of  freedom  it  gave 
originally  to  the  world. 

CHAPTER  Y .—Evolution. 
Formation  of  plants  and  animals  from  the  elements,  development  of  the 
lowest  animals  into  birds,  apes  and  men.  Pithecanthropus,  the  missing 
link  found  in  Java.  The  American  horse  and  other  exterminated  species. 
Birds  with  lizard  ancestors ;  man-like-apes  and  ape-like-men.  The  various 
mountain  centres  of  primitive  races ;  capped  with  ice  these  ranges  pro- 
truded from  a  hot  sea.  Natural  and  sexual  selection  which  with  labor  di- 
vision built  up  the  present  conditions  about  us. 

CHAPTER  Ml.— Heredity  and  Degeneracy. 
Ancestral  pride  is  not  justified  in  going  very  far  back.     Racial  pecu- 
liarities.    Specialized  animals  with  generalized  ancestors.     Effects  of  con- 
sanguine and   early   marriages.     Aryan  features   in   children.      Chemistry 
of  heredity.     Royal  and  other  degenerates. 

CHAPTER  Vll.— Superstition. 
The  superstitions  of  animals,  children  and  savages.  Ceremonies  of 
dogs  and  monkeys,  'rtie  worship  of  animals  by  the  ancients ;  the  mytho- 
logical folk  lore  when  analyzed  affording  accounts  of  early  races.  Super- 
stitious beliefs  and  worship  have  a  natural  history,  and  cruelty  has  been 
associated  with  religions  from  earliest  periods;  the  gradual  culmination 
of  old  religions  in  the  modern  ethical,  and  the  slow  improvement  and 
purification  of  extant  ideas  of  omnipotence. 

CHAPTER  Ylll.—Evolutio\i  of  Language  and  Writing. 

How  birds,  monkeys  and  other  animals  talk  and  what  they  say.  The 
development  of  music  with  other  means  of  emotional  expression.  Speech 
derangements  from  brain  troubles.  Dialects  may  grow  into  languages 
and  if  fittest  to  survive  may  be  perpetuated  though  modified.  Max  Miiller 
on  the  origin  of  languages,  and  the  few  and  simple  Aryan  roots  from  which 
European  languages  evolved.    Ideas  independent  of  words. 

The  early  pictographic  or  sketch  writings  of  savages,  the  hieroglyphs 
and  other  symbolic  writings,  the  Babylonian,  Egyptian  and  other  character 
writing  from  which  descended  our  alphabet  and  numerals,  which  are  still 
imperfect ;  history  of  books  and  origin  of  family  names. 

The  speech  centre  in  the  brain  and  its  gradual  development  and  associa- 
tion with  other  brain  parts. 

CHAPTER  ly^.— Hunger  and  Love. 
The  derivation  of  the  mating  faculty  from  primitive  hunger ;  relation 
of  assimilation  and  propagation,  the  seasons  and  battles  of  mating,  the 


TABLE    OF    CONTENTS.  Vll 

courtship  of  birds,  fishes,  insects  and  other  animals,  the  universality  of 
music  in  courtship  of  man  and  animals.  Chaperonage;  woman  as  prop- 
erty in  civilized  countries  and  as  a,  tyrant  in  some  barbarous  countries 
where  each  female  is  entitled  to  several  husbands.  The  delusions  of  love; 
primary  ancestral  attraction,  the  chemistry  and  biology  of  love,  natural 
and  unnatural  affections,  perversions,  inversions  and  arrests  of  develop- 
ment of  the  propensity. 

CHAPTER  X.— Acquisitiveness. 

The  origin  of  selfishness  traced  to  its  chemical  source  as  an  unavoidable 
and  necessary  attribute  of  all  life  and  of  even  the  atoms  from  which  life 
develops.  Altruism  being  merely  a  higher  developed  and  more  rational 
selfishness. 

CHAPTER  XL— Development  of  the  Mind. 

Mental  traits  of  the  infant,  youth  and  adult  in  their  relations  to  brain 
development. 

CHAPTER  XU.— Evolution  of  the  Brain. 

An  account  of  the  results  of  modern  research  in  brain  function  by 
which  has  been  disclosed  that  separate  parts  of  the  body  are  governed  by 
special  centres  in  the  brain,  and  that  between  the  lowest  animal  and  the 
highest  may  be  traced  a  gradual  development  of  brain  parts  and  structure 
in  keeping  with  increase  of  intelligence. 

The  relations  of  brain  and  mind. 

CHAPTER  XlU.—The  Senses  and  Feelings. 
Development  of  the  senses  of  touch,  hearing,  smell  and  taste  and  their - 
relation  to  pain  and  pleasure. 

CHAPTER  XIV. — The  Instincts  and  Emotions. 
Among  desires  in  general  the  inborn  instinct  to  move  about  is  primary. 
The  desire  for  rest  impelling  to  sleep  also  properly  regarded  enables  such 
important  functions  as  bodily  movements  and  sleep  to  be  discussed  from 
new  vantage  ground.  The  potent  instincts  of  fear,  courage,  anger,  re- 
venge, cruelty,  curiosity,  imitation,  dishonesty  and  even  the  developed  in- 
stinct of  honesty  are  capable  of  being  analyzed  as  animal  phenomena  and 
followed  out  from  their  beginnings  in  the  lower  forms  of  life.  The  cre- 
ation of  habits  that  may  descend  to  offspring  is  described  as  a  factor  in 
heredity  and  in  the  revolution  of  individuals  and  nations. 

CHAPTER  XV.— The  Intellectual  Faculties. 
Under  this  division  some  of  the  matters  treated  are  reason,  judgment, 
intuition,  memory,  imagination,  association,  the  generalizing  ability,  logic 
natural  and  artificial,  and  the  will  power. 

CHAPTER  XVI.— Mental  Diseases. 
Causes  of  insanity.     Deformities  of  the  brain,  blood  supply  defects  to 
train.    Delusions,  hallucinations  and  illusions  explained. 


Vlll  TABLE    OF    CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  XVll.— Character. 
The  influence  of  natural  selection  and  survival  of  the  fittest,  the  effects 
of  education  and  the  bearings    of    physiognomy    and  allied  matters  are 
studied  to  enable  a  better  comprehension  and  appreciation  of  the  complex 
nature  of  man.    National  traits  are  assigned  to  special  causes,  also. 

CHAPTER  XVIll.—Sociology. 

The  changes  made  in  history  of  peoples  by  wars,  plagues,  slavery,  edu- 
cation, organization,  philanthropies  and  co-operative  movements  that  are 
mostly  failures  because  the  experience  of  the  past  it  not  utilized.  The  evo- 
lution of  industries  and  the  professions  and  the  social  organisms  generally 
with  special  reference  to  parasitism  and  mutualism  are  appropriately 
handled. 

CHAPTER  XIX.— Analogy. 

The  remarkable  relationship  of  all  natural  events.  Law  of  relativity. 
Physics  and  chemistry  of  life  and  mind.  The  social  organism  constructed 
from  the  individual  elements.  Analogies  of  society  and  animals.  The  uni- 
versal relationship. 

CHAPTER  XX.— Conclusion. 

A  summary  of  the  preceding  chapters  is  made  to  enable  a  grasp  of  the 
contents  in  their  general  bearings. 


^ 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  MAN  AND  HIS  MIND. 


CHAPTER  I. 
EARLIEST   MEN. 

You  will  sometimes  hear  old  folks  express  a  wish  for  a  return 
of  the  "good  old  days"  of  their  youth.  This  disposition  of  old 
people  to  regard  recent  times  as  inferior  to  remote  periods  is 
recorded  as  universal  and  as  a  senile  characteristic  as  far  back 
as  we  can  go  in  history.  A  little  reflection  shows  that  modern 
times  are  better  than  the  ancient. 

Recently  there  were  no  electric  or  gas  lights,  no  electric  cars 
or  telephones,  horses  pulled  the  street  cars.  There  were  no  type- 
writers, bicycles  or  automobiles,  no  ice-machines,  no  modern  bat- 
tle-ships, when  wooden  ''men-of-war"  moved  with  sails.  When 
the  nineteenth  century  opened  there  were  no  steam-cars  or  steam- 
ships. Candles  dimly  lighted  houses  and  churches  that  were  poor- 
ly heated  in  winter;  there  were  no  postage  stamps,  steel  pens, 
friction  matches,  sewing  machines,  photographs,  city  sewerage, 
hard  coal  fires,  and  machinery  of  all  sorts  was  very  simple,  while 
fruits,  vegetables  or  meats  were  not  canned. 

But  the  nineteenth  century  was  progressive  beyond  preceding 
times,  and  progress  is  one  of  the  forms  of  evolution,  the  evidences 
of  which  are  all  about  us.  Today  in  the  world's  history  we  have 
telegraphs,  railways,  steamships.  Voyages  at  sea  are  now  made 
in  a  few  days  where  formerly  sailing  vessels  used  many  weeks 
to  go  the  same  distance.  We  have  the  daily  newspaper  and  en- 
gravings so  cheap  as  to  be  within  the  means  of  the  poor. 

Yesterday,  so  to  speak,  there  were  none  of  these  things. 
Horses  pulled  clumsy  stage  coaches  through  muddy  roads, 
printed  books  were  unknown.  Fulton  and  W^atts  had  not  thought 
out  their  primitive  engines.  Step  by  step  the  conveniences  of  to 
day  were  evolved  by  gradual,  toilsome  improvements  upon  past 
things  and  methods. 


2  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Half  a  thousand  years  ago  America  was  unknown  to  Euro- 
peans, unless  the  Vikings  knew  of  it.  London,  Edinburg,  Paris 
were  unpaved,  torch-lighted ;  their  streets  were  infested  with  rob- 
bers and  assassins.  And  yet  back  of  this  time  was  a  state  of 
things  still  worse.  A  thousand  years  ago  mercenary  armies 
swarmed  over  Europe,  while  feudal  predatory  man  was  in  dis- 
position much  like  the  sharks,  crocodiles  and  tigers  of  the  seas, 
rivers  and  jungles.  It  is  difficult  to  imagine  a  period  when  we 
had  no  compass,  engines,  telescopes,  barometers,  thermometers, 
sciences  of  any  sort,  no  gunpowder  or  firearms,  or  even  soap 
and  towels ;  a  time  when  no  one  knew  how  to  read  or  write,  for 
there  was  no  alphabet.  Long-haired  and  bearded  pirates  skirted 
the  shores  with  their  rude  war-vessels.  Vandals,  Goths  and  Huns 
overran  the  continents  and  islands,  armed  with  bows  and  spears. 
Still  another  step  and  man  was  a  naked  savage  with  the  rudest  of 
tools  and  weapons.  And  far  enough  back  in  the  world's  making 
there  were  no  men  or  other  animals,  and  even  plants  had  a  be- 
ginning. 

A  rough  general  statement  of  an  early  period  of  the  earth's 
condition  pictures  a  hot  sea  covering  the  globe,  and,  as  the  earth 
cooled  and  contracted,  wrinkles  in  the  shape  of  mountain  chains 
thrust  peaks  miles  above  the  sea  surface,  some  of  which  made  is- 
lands, while  longer  ranges  skirted  basins  which  later  filled  in  by 
the  washing  down  of  the  high  mountains  or  rose  from  the  sea 
as  continents.  Modern  maps  show  coast-range  rims  to  the  larger 
bodies  of  land.  The  vapor  from  the  hot  sea  at  the  base  of  the 
ranges  rose  high  in  the  air  and  becoming  condensed  fell  as  rain 
and  snow  upon  the  peaks,  packing  into  glaciers  which  during 
ages  of  gradual  movement  downward,  together  with  the  action 
of  fierce  storms  and  torrents  from  the  melting  ice,  washed  the 
mountain  elevations  down  into  the  sea  and  formed  the  adjoin- 
ing plains,  though  some  of  these  expanses  may  also  have  risen 
from  the  ocean  or  have  been  created  by  the  falling  of  the  sea 
level.  It  is  conceivable  that  at  one  time  all  there  was  of  Europe, 
Asia,  America  and  Africa  consisted  in  such  mountain  chains, 
vastly  higher  than  what  remains  of  them,  rising  above  the  uni- 
versal hot  ocean.  Between  the  sea  level  and  highest  elevations 
there  were  all  the  temperatures  to  be  found  between  the  tropics 


EARLIEST    MEN. 


and  the  poles,  and  marine  forms  could  find  space  and  conditions 
favorable  to  evolution  into  the  highest  of  land  and  air  types  in 
numberless  such  regions  without  recourse  to  migrations  from 
long  distances,  though  at  later  epochs  such  intermixtures  oc- 
curred. My  special  contention  is  the  sufficiency  of  many  local  en- 
vironments to  have  developed  species  of  many  kinds  within  iso- 
lated regions  and  that  all  the  different  races  of  men  have  not 
sprung  from  a  single  source. 

James  Geikie^  enumerates,  in  his  chapter  on  the  glacial  suc- 
cession in  Europe,  separate  periods: 

I.  Preglacial  Times.  Genial  climatic  conditions  indicated 
during  the  older  pliocene  system.  The  sea  was  over  the  east  and 
south  of  England,  in  Belgium,  Holland,  northern  and  western 
France  and  the  coast  lands  of  the  Mediterranean.  The  luxuriant 
plants  of  the  land  and  the  great  mammals  of  the  pliocene  retreated 
gradually  before  the  approaching  winter  of  the  glacial  period, 
equatorial  sea  forms  also  retreated  south  and  were  replaced  by 
arctic  plants  and  animals. 

II.  First  glacial  epoch.  A  thoroughly  arctic  fauna  lived  in 
the  North  Sea,  great  snow  fields  came  into  existence  and  a 
gigantic  glacier  occupied  the  basin  of  the  Baltic.  The  mountains 
of  Britain  were  ice  clad  as  were  the  Alps.  In  central  France 
large  glaciers  descended  from  the  volcanic  cones  of  Auvergne  and 
Coutal,  and  deployed  upon  the  plateaux,  and  probably  in  many 
other  districts  similar  conditions  existed. 

III.  First  interglacial  epoch.  The  cold  passed  away,  the 
arctic  fauna  retreated  from  the  North  Sea  and  dry  land  occupied 
the  southern  part  of  that  sea  up  to  the  latitude  of  Norfolk  at 
least.  Across  this  new-formed  land  flowed  the  Rhine  and  other 
rivers.  A  temperate  flora  with  hippopotami,  elephants,  deer  and 
other  mammals  filled  Europe  and  England.  A  luxuriant  decidu- 
ous flora  was  in  the  Alps  at  heights  it  now  no  longer  attains,  with 
elephants,  and  this  filled  a  long  period. 

IV.  Second  glacial  epoch.  The  greatest  of  European  ice 
sheets  appeared  covering  all  the  northern  part  of  the  continent 
and  flowed  south  into  Saxony.     The  Alp  glaciers  reached  their 

^  The  Great  Ice  Age,  p.  607. 


4  THE    EVOI.UTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

greatest  extension  and  in  other  mountains  of  Europe  snow  fields 
and  glaciers  made  their  appearance.  Arctic  alpine  plants  came  to 
occupy  the  low  grounds  of  central  Europe  and  northern  annual 
plants  ranged  down  to  the  shores  of  the  Mediterranean. 

V.  Second  interglacial  epoch.  Prolonged  duration  of  the 
previous  stage  attested  by  moraines  and  then  the  climate  became 
genial,  northern  flora  retreated  north  and  southern  flora  came 
north  and  southern  mammals  came  up  again.  Then  the  climate 
deteriorated  and  the  flora  and  fauna  migrated  again  as  the  third 
glacial  epoch  approached.  Much  low  lying  land  in  northwestern 
and  northern  Europe  was  submerged.  This  interglacial  period 
was  of  long  duration. 

VI.  Third  glacial  epoch.  At  the  climax  of  this  epoch  a  most 
extensive  ice  sheet  again  overwhelmed  the  major  portion  of  the 
British  isles  and  ^vast  area  of  the  continent,  but  it  did  not  at- 
tain the  dimensions  of  its  predecessor.  From  the  Alps  great 
glaciers  again  descended  to  the  low  grounds,  where  they  dropped 
the  terminal  moraines  of  the  inner  zone. 

VII.  Third  interglacial  epoch.  After  the  disappearance  of 
glacial  conditions  the  Baltic  became  tenanted  by  a  temperate 
North  Sea  fauna  while  the  adjacent  lands  supported  a  corre- 
sponding terrestrial  fauna  and  flora. 

VIII.  Fourth  glacial  epoch.  In  the  early  stages  of  this 
epoch  the  low  grounds  of  Scotland  were  submerged  to  the  ex- 
tent of  a  hundred  feet  at  least,  while  an  arctic  marine  fauna  lived 
around  the  coasts. 

Eventually  the  various  mountain  districts  were  cased  in  ice 
and  snow,  large  glaciers  filled  the  highland  fiords  and  sent  ice- 
bergs to  the  sea,  implying  a  snow  line  of  i,ooo  or  i,6oo  feet  in 
elevation.  But  the  greatest  ice  was  Baltic,  an  ice  sheet  covered 
Scandinavia  and  Finland,  and  an  ice  stream  flowed  from  the 
Baltic  basin  to  North  Germany  and  Denmark ;  later  the  ice  sheet 
melted,  a  wide  area  of  Scandinavia  was  submerged  in  a  cold  sea 
which  communicated  widely  with  the  Baltic.  In  the  Alps  smaller 
glaciers  than  previously  appeared  and  local  glaciers  were  in  the 
valleys  of  some  of  the  mountain  ranges  of  middle  Europe. 

IX.  Fourth  interglacial  epoch.  The  British  isles  were  part 
of  the  continent,  the  cold  sea  retreated  from  Scandinavia  but  the 


EARLIEST    MEN.  5 

Baltic  became  a  lake,  but  later  submergence  again  came,  and  the 
sea  was  filled  with  a  more  glacial  climate  fauna  than  at  present.. 

X.  Fifth  glacial  epoch.  Moraines  indicate  a  snow  line  of 
2,500  feet  in  the  British  isles  and  submerged  Scottish  coast  is- 
lands to  50  feet  below  the  present  level. 

XL  Fifth  interglacial  epoch.  Land  re-emerged  and  valley 
glaciers  retreated.  Northwest  Europe  drier  and  forest  growths 
were  abundant. 

XII.  Sixth  glacial  epoch.  Snow  line  at  3,500  feet  in  Scot- 
land and  limited  submergence  of  Scotland  20  or  30  feet.  Forests 
decayed  and  peat  bogs  extended  their  area. 

XIII.  The  present  time  in  Britain  is  marked  by  the  modern 
sea-level  and  return  of  a  milder  and  drier  condition  and  final  dis- 
appearance of  permanent  snowfields. 

Professor  Frankland^  says  that  a  satisfactory  theory  must 
take  cognizance  of  the  following  points  in  the  history  of  the  gla- 
cial period : 

I.  That  its  effects  were  felt  over  the  entire  globe.  2.  That 
it  occurred,  or  at  least  terminated,  at  a  geologically  recent  period. 
3.  That  it  was  preceded  by  a  period  of  indefinite  duration  in 
which  glacial  action  was  altogether  wanting  or  was  confined  to 
regions  of  considerable  altitude.  4.  That  during  its  continuance 
atmospheric  precipitation  was  much  greater,  and  at  one  period 
the  height  of  the  snow  line  was  considerably  less  than  at  pres- 
ent. 5.  That  it  was  followed  by  a  period  extending  to  the  pres- 
ent time,  when  glacial  action  became  again  insignificant. 

In  order  to  secure  a  sufficient  supply  of  ice  to  constitute  a 
glacial  epoch  we  must,  in  the  first  place,  have  an  adequate  amount 
of  aqueous  vapor  in  the  atmosphere,  and  this  could  only  arise 
from  heated  waters  of  the  ocean,  and  Frankland  concludes  that  a 
sole  cause  of  the  glacial  epoch  was  a  higher  temperature  of  the 
ocean  than  that  obtaining  at  present,  i.  That  a  higher  oceanic 
temperature  would  give  rise  to  an  increased  evaporation  and 
consequently  to  an  augmented  atmospheric  precipitation.  2. 
That  this  increased  atmospheric  precipitation  would  augment  the 

^Philosophical  Magazine,  May,  1864,  Quoted  by  Sir  H.  H.  Howarth, 

Glacial  Nightmare,  Vol.  2,  p.  S3- 


6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

average  depth  of  permanent  snow  upon  the  ice  bearers  and  would 
within  certain  Hmits  depress  the  snow  Hne. 

James  CrolP  claims  that  Frankland  was  wrong  in  trying  to 
account  for  phenomena  of  glacial  action  by  terrestrial  heat,  as  the 
glacial  sea  was  cold  and  not  hot.  Of  course  it  was,  in  the  vicin- 
ity of  the  bergs,  but  while  the  lofty  mountains  made  the  glaciers 
the  hot  sea  melted  them.  Dawson's  fossil  objections  to  Frank- 
land's  idea  are  also  met  by  great  heat  and  intermediate  tempera- 
tures all  the  way  to  great  cold  to  account  for  the  fossils  found. 
Frankland's  hypothesis  covers  all, the  conditions  and  does  away 
with  the  need  of  twisting  the  earth  out  of  its  position  to  account 
for  only  a  portion  of  the  facts  while  ignoring  such  as  bear 
against  so  forced  a  conclusion.  Howarth*  admits  that  we  should 
have  traces  of  an  arctic  fauna  and  flora  in  the  surface  beds  of  the 
tropics,  but  they  nowhere  occur,  and  there  is  an  absence  of  typ- 
ical North  American  plants  in  the  highlands  of  the  West  Indies 
and  the  Andes  of  the  equator. 

Taking  Geikie's  epochs,  seriatim,  Frankland's  hot  earth  and 
sea  explain  them  thus :  I.  The  snow  line  was  high  with  a  tem- 
perate region  on  the  mountain  sides  above  the  hot  sea,  but  as  the 
sea  grew  less  hot  the  snow  and  ice  line  came  lower  and  animals 
and  plants  moved  southward.  11.  The  receding  of  the  sea  would 
account  for  the  ice  advance,  the  land  appearing  by  elevation  from 
the  sea  with  denudation  of  the  hills  as  the  earth  shrank  and  piled 
up  and  filled  in  plains  which  became  colder  through  distance  from 
the  hot  sea.  III.  Mountains  gradually  denuded  forming  new 
lands  in  Europe  with  melting  of  glaciers  toward  the  north  and 
up  the  mountains.  IV.  Ice  sheet  over  Europe  and  sea  less  hot 
and  farther  south  while  northern  animals  ranged  down  to  the 
Mediterranean.  V.  Glaciers  gradually  melted  by  southern  sun 
and  terrestrial  heat  with  temperate  climate  and  later  much  land 
in  upper  Europe  submerged  by  melting  ice.  VI.  Another  ice 
sheet  covered  Europe,  but  it  was  not  so  extensive  as  the  first  one. 
VII.  Baltic  and  adjacent  land  filled  with  temperate  fauna.  VIII. 
Submergences  from  melting  ice.  Snow  line  i,ooo  to  i,6oo  feet. 
IX.    Temperate,  warmer  than  at  present,  but  sea  not  hot.     X. 

^  Climate  and  Cosmology,  1886. 
*  Glacial  Nightmare,  p.  492. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  7 

Snow  line  2,500  feet,  so  it  was  higher  than  in  the  preceding  gla- 
cial epoch.  Scottish  coast  lands  under  50  feet  of  water,  so  the 
sea  was  less  deep.  XI.  Land  re-emerged  and  forests  grew  and 
valley  glaciers  retreated.  XII.  Snow  line  3,500  feet  in  Scot- 
land and  land  under  20  or  30  feet  of  water,  forests  decayed.  XIII. 
The  present,  with  snow  fields  retreated  northward. 

James  Croll,  of  H.  M.  geological  survey  of  Scotland^  gives 
a  theory  of  the  secular  changes  of  the  earth's  climate  and  quotes 
Morlot  on  two  glacial  periods  separated  by  an  intermediate  one 
in  which  the  ice  that  covered  the  greater  part  of  Europe  disap- 
peared even  in  the  principal  valleys  of  the  Alps  to  a  height  of 
4,400  feet  above  the  present  level  of  the  sea.  Morlot  thinks  there 
may  have  been  a  cosmical  cause :  *'Wild  as  it  may  have  appeared 
when  first  started  the  idea  of  general  and  periodical  eras  of  re- 
frigeration for  our  planet  connected  perhaps  with  some  cosmic 
agency  may  eventually  prove  correct."^ 

Croll'  speaks  of  evidences  of  warm  periods  in  the  arctic  re- 
gion, fir  trees  having  existed  in  latitude  74°  48',  he  cites  from 
Sir  William  Hooper's  report  that  the  Pinus  alba  examined  by 
him  from  the  arctic  regions  consisted  of  alternate  zones  of  narrow 
and  broad  growth  as  though  the  climate  was  hotter  part  of  the 
year  than  at  another.  Probably  the  terrestrial  heat  with  the  solar 
was  the  most  exuberant  stage  and  corresponded  to  the  summer, 
and  the  lesser  heat  afforded  by  the  hot  sea  and  ground  alone  for 
the  balance  of  the  year  accounted  for  the  smaller  zone.  Arctic 
regions  were  warm  during  the  Permian  period  and  there  is  a 
close  resemblance  of  the  Permian  flora  to  that  of  the  Carboni- 
ferous, pointing  to  a  former  prevalence  of  a  warm  and  equable 
climate,  and  a  warm  sea  must  have  been  in  high  latitudes  from 
the  magnesium  limestone  there. 

Frankland's  hypothesis  explains  the  stages  Croll  adopts: 
First  mountains  with  glacial  peaks  and  hot  sea  base  in  the  polar 
regions  and  snow  line  high  at  the  equator  because  of  combined 
sun  and  earth  heat.  Second,  formation  of  plains  and  subsidence 
of  sea  with  less  terrestrial  heat  than  formerly  but  sufficient  to 

^  Climate  and  Time  in  Their  Geological  Relations. 
"  Edinburg  New  Philos.  Jour.  Vol.  II.,  p.  28. 
Mbid.,  p.  261. 


8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

produce  luxuriant  vegetation  and  develop  animals  abundantly. 
The  mountains  lowering  by  washings  with  a  corresponding  rise 
of  the  glacial  and  snow  eminences.  Third,  cooling  of  the  earth 
and  lowering  of  mountains  by  water  and  ice  action  could  bring 
the  ice  sheets  and  glaciers  farther  south  toward  the  Ohio  and 
Mediterranean  as  they  melt.  Fourth,  when  the  final  melting  took 
place  the  present  epoch  arrived. 

Snow  would  lie  higher  up  on  mountains  at  the  equator  owing 
to  the  united  effect  of  the  perpendicular  sun  and  the  heat  of  the 
earth  and  sea,  in  ages  before  the  earth  was  cooler.  Proper  regard 
for  Frankland's  idea  would  explain  away  the  apparent  inconsis- 
tency of  the  ice  line  going  higher  up  the  mountain  as  the  earth 
cooled.  The  sea  being  less  hot  there  would  be  vastly  less  vapor 
to  condense,  and  not  so  much  snow  would  fall,  and  as  what  was 
melted  was  not  replaced  the  singular  result  would  be  that  while 
great  heat  made  deeper  snow  less  heat  brought  less  snow,  and  as 
the  earth  grew  cooler  the  snow  peaks  went  higher. 

Dana^  gives  the  relative  lengths  of  geological  ages  in  their 
time  ratios  based  on  the  maximum  thicknesses  of  the  rock  forma- 
tions and  the  rate  of  sedimentation  and  erosion.  The  whole  dura- 
tion of  geological  time  he  places  at  200,000,000  years ;  deducting 
for  the  Archean  the  rest  of  the  time  would  be  130  million  years. 
Reade  gives  95  million,  Walcott  70  million,  Hutchison  600  mil- 
lion, McGee  6,000  million,  and  Kelvin  100  million.  Dana  sums 
up  the  results  of  speculation  as  between  ten  million  and  six  thou- 
sand million  years.  The  relative  duration  of  the  Cambrian  and 
Silurian,  the  Devonian  and  Carboniferous  correspond  to  the  ratio 
of  43^  to  I  :i,  or  perhaps  4:1  :i,  and  for  the  Paleozoic,  Mezozoic 
and  Cenozoic  12:3:1.  Since  the  glacial,  Lyell,  31,000  years, 
Spencer  32,000  years.  Reptiles  appeared  first  in  the  Permian 
but  their  age  was  the  Mezozoic.  Mammals  began  then  but  their 
age  was  the  Cenozoic.  So  man  came  in  the  Quaternary  and  pos- 
sibly in  the  Tertiary,  while  the  present  is  his  age. 

The  Appalachian  west  of  the  Blue  Range  was  the  marginal 
bottom  of  the  interior  Palezoic  sea.  During  the  Carboniferous 
it  was  sometimes  above  or  below  the  sea.      The  Sierra  was  the 

^Manual  of  Geology,  p.  1023. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  9 

first  born  of  the  Cordilleran  Range,  the  marginal  bottom  line  of 
the  Pacific.  The  Alps  during  the  Mesozoic  and  early  Tertiary 
was  the  marginal  sea  bottom.  At  the  end  of  the  Eocene  these 
were  crushed  together  and  folded  upward.  The  Himalayas  were 
similarly  constructed. 

A.  H.  Keane^  regards  the  Tertiary  as  occupying  3  per  cent  of 
time;  the  Eocene  with  its  mammals  1,250,000  years;  the  Miocene 
with  higher  apes  1,000,000  years;  the  Pliocene  with  man-like 
apes  850,000  years.  Many  geologists  now  believe  the  ice  age 
Pliestocene  of  the  Quaternary  or  Post  Tertiary  was  more  prob- 
ably coincident  with  elevation  rather  than  subsidence.  The  arctic 
and  tropic  fauna  were  mixed  and  men-like  apes  were  already 
spread  over  the  dry  land  of  most  of  the  world  with  palaeolithic 
man.  The  approximate  beginning  of  the  strictly  Pliestocene  or 
Quaternary  times  was  600,000  years  ago,  and  the  duration  was 
about  530,000  years.  The  Post  Pliocene  or  pre-historic  time  of 
neolithic  man  was  scarcely  less  than  60,000  years  and  probably 
more  largely  coincides  with  the  general  disappearance  of  ice  and 
appearance  of  men  of  the  new  stone  age. 

The  historic  or  present  age  has  been  stated  as  proven  to  be 
10,000  years  and  archaeological  prospects  promise  to  push  this 
length  of  time  much  further  backward. 

Joseph  Le  Conte^*^  in  an  article  on  Critical  Periods  in  the  His- 
tory of  the  Earth  says : 

"Great  and  comparatively  rapid  changes  in  organic  forms  are 
produced  in  the  following  ways :  I.  The  changes  in  physical 
geography  open  gateways  and  permit  migrations  in  many  direc- 
tions. 2.  The  changes  in  climate  compel  migrations  mainly 
north  and  south.  3.  These  migrations  in  their  turn  precipitate 
different  faunas  and  floras  upon  one  another,  producing  severe 
struggles  between  invaders  and  natives,  and  therefore  the  de- 
struction of  many  forms  of  both,  and  large  modifications  of  the 
survivors.  4.  The  foreign  invasion  compels  many  natives  in 
their  turn  to  migrate  and  so  the  wave  of  invasion,  of  severer 
struggle  and  of  consequent  changes  is  propagated  as  far  as  physi- 
cal conditions  will  allow  migration.     The  effect  of  all  this  must 

'  Ethnology,  1896,  Ch.  IV.,  Antiquity  of  Man. 

"  Univ.  of  Cal.  Bulletin  of  Dept.  of  Geology,  Aug.,  1895. 


lO  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

be  a-  more  rapid  evolution  of  organic  forms  as  the  result  (a)  of 
a  new  environment  and  (b)  of  a  severer  struggle  for  life.  The 
more  rapid  rate  of  evolution  and  especially  new  opportunities 
give  rise  to  higher  dominant  classes.  These  higher  dominant 
classes  again  in  turn  determine  changes  in  loAver  forms,  especially 
their  immediate  rivals,  and  these  changes  are  again  propagated 
downward  through  the  whole  organic  kingdom  and  compel  a  new 
adjustment  of  the  whole  on  a  different  basis." 

Le  Conte  further  holds  that  *'the  great  theater  of  physical 
changes,  of  extensive  migrations  and  of  severe  struggle  and  there- 
fore of  rapid  evolution,  especially  of  higher  forms,  and  therefore 
also  the  place  of  first  appearance  of  dominant  classes  has  un- 
doubtedly been  what  Huxley  calls  Arctogsea,  i.  e.,  those  parts  of 
North  America  and  Eurasia  that  are  north  of  the  Himalayas  and 
Sahara,  or  all  the  northern  hemisphere  north  of  Central  America, 
Sahara  and  the  Himalayas.  This,  the  greatest  body  of  contigu- 
ous land,  has  in  later  geological  times  been  sometimes  divided 
and  sometimes  united.  It  has  been  subject  to  the  greatest 
changes,  the  widest  migrations,  the  severest  conflicts,  and  there- 
fore the  most  rapid  evolution  of  dominant  forms.  But  these 
dominant  forms  have  from  time  tO'  time  as  opportunity  offered 
invaded  more  southern  lands  and  always  as  conquerers." 

In  the  Miocene  and  early  Pliocene  the  climate  of  Greenland 
was  like  what  we  find  in  Cuba  today.  There  were  monkeys,  ele- 
phants and  other  tropical  animals,  but  as  the  earth  cooled  and 
the  ice  covered  these  regions  animal  and  vegetable  life  changed 
to  that  of  the  present  kind.  Immediately  before,  during  or  imme- 
diately after  the  glacial  period  man  first  appeared  in  the  earth,  at 
least  it  is  in  the  strata  of  this  time  that  we  find  the  first  traces  of 
his  presence.  Man  can  live  and  thrive  in  a  range  of  200  degrees 
temperature  and  in  valleys  far  below  sea  level,  like  that  of  the 
Dead  Sea,  and  on  table  lands  and  mountains  15,000  to  20,000 
feet  above  the  sea,  wliere  even  the  cat  perishes.  Some  are  exclu- 
sively vegetarian  while  others  eat  nothing  but  animal  food.  Pata- 
gonians  go  naked  in  a  cold  climate  and  some  people  in  the  tropics 
are  constantly  clothed.  Man  lives  in  arid  deserts  and  in  north- 
east India  where  the  rain  fall  is  300  inches  annually.  Man  is 
stronger  than  his  surroundings,  he  adapts  himself  to  them  or 


EARLIEST    MEN.  II 

they  adapt  themselves  to  him,  an  instance  of  the  former  being 
seen  in  the  .Eskimo  being  cheerful,  garrulous  and  inventive 
amidst  his  gloomy  surroundings.  The  rare  air  of  high  regions 
expands  the  chest,  and  tribes  on  the  highlands  of  Peru  and  Bo- 
livia, at  10,000  feet,  have  long  bodies,  broad  chests  and  short 
legs.  Limits  of  height  are  placed  at  6  feet  4  inches  for  Polyne- 
sians, 6  feet  for  Kaffirs,  5  feet  Yi  inch  for  Asiatic  Malays,  and 
56.7  inches  for  Bushmen.  Puberty  in  the  tropics  is  three  years 
earlier  than  elsewhere.  Slant  eyes  are  not  peculiar  alone  to  Mon- 
golians and  not  even  extensive  among  them.  D'Obigny  found 
a  tribe  in  South  America  with  such  eyes.  The  steatopagy  or 
large  rumps  of  the  Hottentot  women  persisted  through  sexual 
selection,  and  some  of  the  women  are  unable  to  rise  when  seated 
without  help. 

Races  differ  in  anatomy,  physiology,  location,  language,  cus- 
toms, mental  processes  and  even  in  their  parasites.  Brunettes 
have  more  odor  than  blondes,  the  Semitic  more  than  the  Aryans 
and  negroes  most  of  all.  Blonde  invaders  of  ancient  times  came 
by  sea  and  land  but  always  from  the  north. 

At  first  men  are  naturally  hunters,  warlike  and  cruel,  requir- 
ing; a  wide  range  of  space  for  seeking  game,  then  they  became 
pastoral,  but  as  they  must  move  their  herds  from  one  pasture  to 
another  they  are  likely  to  become  nomadic,  and  having  to  defend 
their  flocks  they  are  alert  and  aggressive.  When  they  settle  down 
to  agriculture  their  manners  soften,  the  slaves  they  have  made 
from  prisoners  of  war  become  serfs  and  in  such  ways  civilization 
develops  from  unpromising  beginnings.  Early  men  were  dis- 
orderly, uncleanly,  uncouth  and  rough,  loving  turmoil  and  pillage, 
with  low  grade  intelligence,  their  immature  minds  slowly  rising 
to  the  possibility  of  making  a  fire  by  rubbing  two  sticks  together, 
and  it  is  not  so  long  ago  when  our  grand  parents  used  tinder 
boxes  in  which  were  kept  flint,  steel  and  tow  with  which  fires 
were  lighted. 

The  long  arms  and  short  legs  of  the  man-like  apes  are  due  to 
living  in  trees  and  using  the  hands  for  climbing,  the  feet  being 
turned  inward  to  grasp  the  tree,  and  when  children  have  weak 
ankles  with  turned-in  feet  it  is  a  reversion  to  the  older  ape-like 
form  through  the  later  acquired  muscles  of  the  lower  leg  not 


12  THE    EVOLUTION    OP^    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

fully  developing.  The  human  infant  grasps  and  can  hang  from 
a  stick  when  just  born,  like  its  monkey  cousins ;  the  protruding 
abdomen  of  the  child  is  the  same  in  Bushmen  and  pygmies  and 
in  the  sketches  made  by  cave  dwellers.  When  early  ape-like  men 
left  the  forests  to  chase  game  across  wide  plains,  and  were  com- 
pelled to  develop  fleetness  to  keep  from  being  devoured  them- 
selves, their  legs  grew  longer  than  their  arms  and  a  superior 
alertness  also  developed.  Archaeology  shows  that  cave  men  were 
filthy  beasts,  dwelling  in  uncleaned  holes,  doubtless  with  no  per- 
manent mating,  or  such  as  began  with  violence  and  ended  in 
slavery,  Geikie^^  concludes  that  after  having  occupied  English 
caves  for  untold  ages  Palaeolithic  man  disappeared  forever  and 
with  him  vanished  many  animals  now  either  locally  or  wholly 
extinct. 

The  animals  living  at  the  same  time  with  man  during  the 
glacial  period  were  the  lion,  leopard,  hyena,  elephant,  hippopota- 
mus, mastodon,  elk,  musk-sheep,  reindeer,  wolverine,  fox,  mar- 
mot, lemming,  ibex,  vole  and  chamois. 

In  parts  of  the  Alps  and  in  polar  regions  man  is  still  in  the 
ice  age.  He  inhabited  Europe  when  the  melting  snow  formed 
rivers  at  high  levels,  much  longer  than  those  of  our  time.  He 
has  left  his  traces  in  implements  of  stone  or  bone.  Stone, tools 
survived  into  the  bronze  and  iron  age  just  as  we  find  some  tribes 
using  flint  arrow  heads  at  this  time.  The  deposits  in  which  lie 
the  remains  of  the  early  human  traces  are  cavern  loam,  river  allu- 
vium, lake  bottoms,  peat  mosses,  sand  dunes,  and  other  super- 
ficial accumulations;  and  the  animal  remains  of  both  tropic  and 
arctic  climates  are  mixed  in  the  European  deposits,  which  could 
be  explained  by  cold  and  hot  climates  succeeding  each  other,  or 
by  the  high  mountains  affording  the  icy  temperature  in  which 
animals  and  men  suited  to  polar  climates  developed,  the  hot  sea 
at  the  base  of  such  mountains  at  the  same  time  making  the  foot- 
hills and  what  few  narrow  plains  there  were  congenial  to  tropical 
forms,  and  between  these  elevations  life  adapted  to  temperate 
regions  could  thrive. 

The  assumption   that  man   descended  ^rom  a  single  source 

"  The  Great  Ice  Age,  p.  624. 


EARLIEST    MEN. 


IS 


located  in  a  region  near  Java  most  favorable  to  his  development 
has  less  evidence  than  that  several  races  originated  in  widely- 
separated  parts  of  the  earth.  Like  causes  producing  like  effects, 
similarly  constituted  organisms  very  low  in  the  scale  of  life  could 
build  up  gradually  the  different  races  of  men  which  finally  be- 
came more  or  less  mixed  as  the  means  of  travel  improved.  Dif- 
ferences as  well  as  resemblances  are  thus  better  accounted  for. 
Especially  is  it  likely  that  the  stunted  races  such  as  the  Lapps  and 
Eskimo  and  the  Philippine  and  African  dwarfs  were  separately 
evolved  from  conditions  and  progenitors  unlike  those  of  the 
Aryan,  Semitic  or  Turanian  peoples.  The  early  cave,  cliff  and 
lake  dwellers  who  preceded  the  Celts  into  Europe  might  just  as 
well  have  sprung  into  being  from  more  adjacent  forests  and  fields 
as  to  have  come  from  some  more  distant  spot.  The  "little  men," 
the  "fairies"  and  the  ''pixies"  could  have  thus  had  a  basis  of 
reality  in  the  Aryans  having  found  the  forests  of  their  new  homes 
full  of  monkeys,  men-like  apes  and  ape-like  men  with  some  still 
more  human  stone-age  savages. 

Adopting  the  polyphyletic  origin  of  mankind  in  preference  to 
the  monophyletic,  the  separate  beginnings  of  races  rather  than 
that  they  came  from  a  single  source,  we  are  justified  in  regarding 
the  stone  age  men  to  have  sprung  up  here  and  there  from  ape 
like  forms  in  the  mountains  of  America',  Europe  and  Asia,  many 
of  whom  perished  in  conflicts  with  animals  or  invading  races, 
while  changes  of  climate  drove  out  many  more.  Some  of  the 
stunted  races  may  be  descendants  of  certain  peculiar  aborigines. 
The  dwarfs  of  Africa  are  an  ape-like  people  with  an  origin  sepa- 
rate and  maybe  antedating  that  of  the  larger  blacks,  though  their 
language  has  been  learned  from  the  latter.  Many  dwarf  races 
elsewhere  have  perished  through  changed  conditions  around 
them. 

Stone  age  Indians  may  have  been  indigenous  to  North  Amer- 
ica or  they  may  have  come  by  way  of  the  Aleutian  islands,  or  by 
Behring's  strait,  where  America  and  Asia  are  only  36  miles 
apart,  but  it  is  not  unreasonable  to  suppose  that  the  Peruvian 
civilization  began  and  ended  at  its  birthplace  in  the  Andes  of 
South  America  without  aid  from  abroad.  There,  were  cities  in 
this  new  world  that  rivaled  those  of  the  old  world,  lighted  by 


14  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

night,  policed,  containing  palaces,  temples,  courts,  schools,  parks, 
aquseducts  and  fountains  with  graded  roads  and  with  workers  in 
gold,  silver,  copper  and  bronze.  The  mound  builders  of  the  north 
have  been  claimed  to  be  descendants  of  aborigines  among  whom 
some  Welshmen  settled.  The  tradition  being  that  driven  by 
storms  to  the  coast  of  America  long  before  Columbus  sailed  they 
followed  down  the  Ohio  river  and  founded  the  Natchez  and 
Mandan  tribes  with  others  that  have  built  mounds  from  the 
sources  of  the  Mississippi  and  Missouri  rivers  to  their  mouths. 
The  remnant  of  these  tribes  at  Fort  Berthold  use  tub-shaped 
boats  made  of  hides  such  as  ancient  Welshmen  were  found  to  be 
paddling  about  in  by  the  Romans,  and  are  said  to  speak  a  Welsh 
dialect.  Certainly  the  Mexican  Aztecs  had  bloodthirsty  rites 
resembling  the  religious  butcheries  of  human  beings  by  the 
Druids,  which  with  what  they  knew  of  "civilization"  may  have 
been  taught  them  by  visitors  from  across  the  sea  as  their  legends 
declared.  The  Yucatan  Maias  are  reported  to  have  been  mixed 
with  Japanese  of  15  centuries  ago  as  architectural  remains  are 
said  to  indicate,  but  in  all  these  cases  where  advance  beyond  sav- 
agery is  made  by  a  race  it  is  not  necessary  to  imagine  that  the 
body  of  the  race  came  from  afar;  it  was  often  only  the  instruc- 
tion, and  in  the  case  of  the  Peruvians  what  they  knew  appears 
to  have  been  of  home  production. 

The  subsequent  settlers  among  the  primitive  people  of  Amer- 
ica, in  some  cases  exerminating  them,  were  Polynesians,  Maoris, 
Hawaiians  and  Malays  generally.  Mexico  tracing  its  Toltecs,  it 
is  stated,  to  emigrants  from  Catalina  island.  The  indigenous  and 
peculiar  antique  American  civilizations  rank  with  those  of  the 
Assyrians  and  Hindoos. 

After  an  investigation  of  the  "Lansing  skull,"  found  March 
"*23,  1902,  on  a  farm  near  Lansing,  Kansas,  Curator  Long,  of  the 
Kansas  City  Public  Museum,  and  Professor  Williston,  of  Kan- 
sas University,  believe  it  to  be  the  skull  of  a  prehistoric  man,  who 
probably  lived  during  the  glacial  period,  35,000  years  ago.  The 
skull  was  found  under  well  defined  strata  of  earth  and  rock  and 
river  loess. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  I5 

Prof.  Warren  K.  Morehead^^  disposes  of  many  illusions  and 
superstitions  concerning  the  original  inhabitants  of  America. 
They  were  of  rather  low  grade  intelligence,  divisible  into  broad 
and  long  heads  with  specimens  of  skulls  occasionally  found  of  a 
very  low  type  resembling  the  Neanderthal  skull  with  its  project- 
ing eyebrow  ridges  and  retreating  low  forehead. 

Dr.  Frederick  A,  Cook,  the  explorer/^  says  that  the  short 
races  about  the  Western  Chilean  Channels  and  Strait  are  imper- 
fectly developed,  living  on  snails,  crabs  and  fish  and  they  have 
become  almost  extinct  and  were  always  the  lowest  and  most 
abject  of  Fuegians.  A  similar  race  is  in  the  Cape  Horn  region. 
A  third  race  is  one  of  giants  called  Onas  by  their  neighbors  and 
Yahgans  they  call  themselves.  They  refuse  missionaries  and 
mistrust  white  men  with  good  reason.  They  live  on  the  main 
island  of  Tierra  Del  Fuego  which  is  as  large  as  New  York  State, 
guarding  it  carefully  to  keep  others  out,  but  the  gold  miners  and 
sheep  raisers  have  pushed  these  giants  into  the  useless  highlands 
to  starve  or  freeze. 

Scattered  over  the  world  are  many  highlands  and  peaks  as 
well  as  mountain  ranges  that  must  have  protruded  as  islands 
above  the  primeval  hot  sea,  affording  means  for  sea  animals  to 
gradually  develop  into  forms  suited  to  the  land  or  tp  inhabit  both 
land  and  sea,  water  reptiles  into  land  reptiles  and  some  of  these 
into  birds  and  mammals  which  by  being  able  to  generate  internal 
heat  were  enabled  to  survive  in  higher,  colder  regions  than  those 
to  which  their  progenitors  were  confined,  through  having  their 
heat  supplied  by  the  temperature  of  the  medium  in  which  they 
lived.  There  could  have  been  ages  elapsing  between  the  spring- 
ing up  of  the  different  main  races  of  men  who,  thousands  of 
years  later,  may  have  mixed  to  a  greater  or  less  extent.  Austra- 
lia, for  instance,  is  very  much  in  arrears  in  the  stages  of  devel- 
opment of  its  animal  life,  and  is  more  akin  to  the  Tertiary  epoch 
than  that  of  any  other  era,  and  the  highest  mammals  of  America 
are  far  behind  those  of  the  old  world,  and  there  are  no  man-like 

"  Primitive  Man  in  Ohio,  1892,  and  in  other  books  recording  his  im- 
portant researches. 

"  The  Giant  Indians  of  Tierra  Del  Fuego,  March,  1900,  Century  Maga- 
zine. 


ID  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

apes  in  America,  but  the  conditions  in  Chili  and  Peru  appear  to 
have  favored  a  rapid  evolution  of  man,  while  the  aborigines  of 
Australia  were  in  keeping  with  the  low  stages  of  development 
of  the  animals  there  in  general. 

In  the  tropical  Eurasian  Miocene  there  lived  an  anthropo- 
morphic ape,  Dryopithecus  Fontanii,  and  Bourgeois  and  Hany 
believe  that  the  flint  flakes  and  scrapers  found  in  the  Miocene 
strata  of  Thenay  belonged  to  that  period,  so  man  lived  with  the 
mastodon,  rhinoceros  and  other  animals  of  the  Miocene. 

Leaving  out  of  consideration  poetical  accounts  of  ancient 
dwarfs  such  as  Homer  made  when  he  said  they  were  as  big  as 
your  fist  and  their  deadly  enemies  were  the  cranes,  there  are 
authentic  observations  of  these  small  people.  Herodotus  men- 
tions negro  dwarfs  in  Libya ;  Aristotle  located  them  in  the  upper 
Nile;  DuChaillu,  Schweinfurth  and  Stanley , describe  them,  and 
they  have  also  been  found  in  the  Philippines.  Professor  D.  C. 
Worcester  of  the  American  Commission  to  that  place  reports  that 
there  are  about  25,000  of  these  pigmies,  and  that  they  are  remark- 
ably like  monkeys.  Dr.  Becker  placing  their  height  at  four  feet 
eight  inches ;  the  women  being  about  four  inches  shorter.  Their 
chests  and  calves  are  poorly  developed,  each  big  toe  is  widely 
separated  from  the  other  toes,  their  feet  are  large  and  clumsy 
and  their  hair  grows  in  scattered  clumps  over  the  scalp,  their 
heads  are  too  large  for  their  bodies  and  their  woolly  mops  make 
this  appear  greater ;  they  can  counterfeit  apes  in  a  startling  man- 
ner, their  jaws  projecting  far  beyond  their  noses  and  their  faces 
being  deeply  wrinkled  like  those  of  monkeys;  they  are  naked 
except  for  loin  cords  and  a  clout  or  apron.  They  are  monogam- 
ous and  win  wives  by  test  of  marksmanship  with  bows  and  blunt 
arrows,  the  woman  being  the  target.  These  negritos  have  never 
been  subdued  by  the  Malays  or  Spaniards,  they  are  gentle  and 
do  not  murder  wantonly  but  are  suspicious  of  Christians  who 
abuse  them.  They  defend  themselves  vigorously  and  r^aliate 
by  robbing  and  destroying  fields  and  villages  at  night.  To  their 
children  they  give  the  names  of  birds,  plants  and  insects.  They 
cannot  count  above  ten  and  have  no  names  for  colors,  though 
they  can  tell  them  apart.  They  desert  the  sick  if  a  plague  such 
as  cholera  or  small  dox  breaks  out. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  I7 

The  favorite  weapon  of  the  dwarfs  wherever  found  has  been 
the  poisoned  arrow,  and  their  marksmanship  is  unerring.  C. 
Morris^"*  says  ''the  pigmies  are  always  hunters,  making  the  deep 
forests  their  home,  and  they  are  masters  through  their  agility, 
cunning  and  deadly  weapons,  of  the  world  of  lower  animals. 
Physically  they  are  not  far  removed  from  the  man-ape,  their 
remote  ancestor,  for  they  retain  various  ape-like  characters,  as  in 
aspect  of  face,  shape  of  body,  occasional  hairiness,  diminutive 
size,  shortness  of  legs,  imperfect  development  of  calf,  occasional 
waddling  gait  in  walking,  etc." 

Morris  further  remarks  that  "in  the  Lapps  of  northern 
Europe  we  have  another  small  race,  possibly  the  lineal  descend- 
ants of  the  Quaternary  pigmies.  Everywhere  the  small  man  has 
been  forced  to  retire  into  forests,  deserts  and  icy  barrens  before 
the  stronger  and  taller  men.  The  folk-lore  of  Europe  is  full  of 
traditions  of  a  race  of  dwarfs  and  their  conflicts  with  men  of  a 
larger  mold,  and  there  are  various  indications  that  this  race  was 
once  wide  spread." 

The  remains  of  stone  age  men  are  found  all  over  Europe  with 
the  bones  of  elephants,  lions,  rhinoceroses,  hippopotami,  hyenas 
and  mammoths,  dating  from  the  rough  stone  age  or  palaeolithic 
period  when  rude  flints,  boulders,  bones  or  pieces  of  horn  and 
wood  were  the  tools  and  weapons.  Some  of  the  tribes  were  with- 
out fires  and  even  in  our  time  there  are  savages  who  do  not  know 
the  uses  of  fire  in  cooking.  Worsae  estimates  the  Scandinavian 
stone  age  as  during  and  previous  to  3,000  B.  C,  Bunsen  estimat- 
ing the  human  race  as  at  least  20,000  years  old,  so  it  was  during 
this  time  that  the  stone  age  began.  The  next  age,  that  of  polished 
stone,  the  neolithic,  in  the  same  region,  extending  between  B.  C. 
2,000  and  1,000,  when  men  carefully  polished  their  stone  imple- 
ments. Kitchen  middens  or  refuse  heaps  abound  in  Denmark 
and  southward,  in  which  are  found  shells  and  bones  with  other 
remains  of  the  food  eaten  by  these  primitive  people.  There  are 
races  now  living  still  in  the  stone  age.  The  North  American 
Indians  were  in  this  stone  age  state  when  America  was  discovered 
and  many  of  them  have  not  advanced  beyond  it.  Aztecs  got  as 
far  as  the  copper  stage  and  the  Peruvians  passed  to  the  bronze 

"Man  and  His  Ancestor,  p.  156. 


l8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

age,  while  all  other  natives  continued  to  use  stone  tools  and 
weapons.  Numerous  stone  circles  in  Britain  and  Ireland  are 
thirty  feet  up  to  twelve  hundred  feet  in  diameter.  The  most  im- 
posing is  near  Devizes  in  Wiltshire,  which  Lubbock  refers  to  the 
beginning  of  the  bronze  age,  Stonehenge  was  built  later.  Many 
of  these  circles  proved  to  be  burial  places,  the  original  mound 
of  earth  covering  them  having  washed  away,  while  some  were 
presumed  to  be  temples.  Carnac  in  Brittany  consists  of  eleven 
rows  of  unhewn  stone  twenty-two  feet  or  less  in  height.  The 
avenues  extended  for  miles.  Most  of  the  great  tumuli  in  Brit- 
tany belong  to  the  stone  age.^^ 

The  bronze  period  for  Scandinavia  is  placed  at  B.  C.  i,ooo 
to  500. 

The  early  iron  age  generally  for  Europe  dates  from  about 
A.  D.  I  to  450,  the  later  iron  age  extending  between  A.  D.  700  to 
1,000,  but  in  Scandinavia  the  stone  age  lingered  along  in  places 
as  it  did  elsewhere  in  the  north.  The  Eskimo  are  practically  still 
in  the  stone  age.  Morlot  assigns  to  the  age  of  stone  7,000  years, 
bronze  4,200  years  and  to  the  early  Roman  period  1,800  years. 

The  Turanians  form  one  of  the  oldest  and  largest  races,  for 
wherever  the  Aryans  went  they  appear  to  have  conquered  a 
Turanian  people  and  to  have  finally  amalgamated  with  it.  The 
origin  of  the  name  is  in  the  Aryans  calling  Persia  by  the  name 
of  Iran,  the  land  of  light,  after  they  settled  there,  and  the  north 
country  full  of  barbarians  they  named  Turan,  or  the  land  of 
darkness.  As  it  is  customary  for  primitive  people  to  group  all 
foreigners  together  as  one  race,  these  Turanians  may  have  been 
composite,  but  ethnologists  divide  them  into  two  branches,  the 
Ugro-Finnic  and  Dravidian,  ^^'  another  division  is  into  the  Turkic, 
Ugric,  Finnic  and  Mongolic  divisions.  The  Finns  were  a  hunt- 
ing folk,  low  in  civilization,  with  neither  wool,  salt  nor  wagons 
with  wheels,  nor  could  they  count  to  a  hundred.^'  The  Finns 
preceded  the  Finno-Tartars,  or  Ural-Altaic  family  into  Europe, 
the  latter  coming  during  historic  times.  Their  relatives  the 
Magyars  settled  in  Hungary  and  were  left  there  as  the  other 

"  Sir  J.  Lubbock,  Prehistoric  Times,  Chapter  V. 

"  F.  Lenormont,  Manual  of  Ancient  History  of  the  East,  b.  I.,  Cb.  4. 
"Hehn,  Culturpflanzen. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  I^ 

Ugrics  abandoned  them  and  returned  to  Asia.  The  Manchu 
branch  of  Tartars  captured  China  and  mixed  with  the  Mongols, 
though  keeping  themselves  as  distinct  as  possible  for  governing 
purposes,  but  passion  is  everywhere  stronger  than  policy,  account- 
ing for  the  dark  complexions  of  the  children  of  white  Aryan 
nobles  among  the  Hindoo,  the  mixing  of  "children  of  the  sun" 
with  the  "children  of  the  earth"  among  the  exclusive  Aztecs,  the 
Inca  being  regarded  as  a  god.  The  tawny  Egyptian  skin  comes 
from  the  governing  white  Semites  being  absorbed  to  extinction 
among  the  African  blacks,  as  the  few  conquering  Normans  were 
finally  lost  among  the  multitude  of  Saxons  of  England.  The 
Ugro-Finns  subdivided  into  Turks,  Hungarians,  Finns,  Estho- 
nians  and  nearly  all  northern  tribes  in  Europe  and  Asia.  The 
Dravidian  branch  is  in  the  south,  consisting  of  the  people  of  Hin- 
dustan, the  Tamils,  Telingos,  Carnates,  who  were  subjugated  by 
the  Aryans. 

The  Caucasus  acted  as  a  barrier  between  the  north  and  south, 
stopping  and  turning  aside  the  moving  populations,  and  it  also 
sheltered  remnants  of  many  different  peoples  driven  into  it.  It 
is  a  kind  of  ethnological  museum  of  countless  races  and  lan- 
guages, probably  some  from  the  early  ages  of  the  world.  The 
term  Caucasian  is  meaningless  to  designate  any  race,  for  the 
Caucasus  is  full,  as  in  Strabo's  time,  of  races  differing  in  religion, 
languages,  aspect,  manner  and  character.^^  The  Georgians  of 
that  region  seem  to  be  related  to  the  Iberians  of  Spain  and  Ire- 
land. The  Circassians  are  Mohammedans  and  were  driven  out 
by  Russia  to  the  number  of  half  a  million  in  1866  and  settled 
in  various  Turkish  provinces.  Their  country  was  200  miles  in 
extent.  The  wild  Kurds  who  have  been  roaming  on  the  Meso- 
potamian  outskirts  for  ages  and  who  harass  the  Armenians  are 
Turanian  nomads. 

The  most  powerful  cause  of  migrations  and  of  the  develop- 
ment of  all  animals  and  mankind,  physically  and  mentally,  is 
simple,  plain,  ordinary  hunger,  and  next  in  importance  in  such 
matters  is  the  sexual  function.  These  physiological  motives  have 
filled  the  earth  with  life,  turmoil,  strife,  love  capers,  massacres, 

^*J.  Bryce,  Transcaucasia  and  Ararat,  Ch.  II. 


20  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

hates  and  alliances.  Fear,  particularly  in  the  form  of  supersti- 
tion based  upon  insufficient  observation  of  nature  and  fostered 
by  the  designs  of  those  who  fatten  upon  ignorance,  comes  after 
hunger  and  sexuality  as  a  motor  in  human  affairs.  Then  there 
are  calamities  like  great  storms,  the  sudden  disappearance  of 
rivers,  volcanic  action,  earthquakes,  drought,  famine,  pestilence^ 
wars,  etc.  Peculiar  winds  gave  origin  to  the  conception  of  com- 
pass points  and  the  incessant  illusions  of  nature,  traditional  delu- 
sions, the  tendency  to  exaggerate,  the  lies  of  travelers,  merchants 
and  priests,  tended  to  keep  the  savage  brain  in  a  state  of  bewil- 
derment and  childish  receptivity  for  any  sort  of  silly  ideas,  design, 
ignorance  or  misinterpretation  could  impose  upon  it.^^ 

The  evolution  of  the  family  is  by  cohesion  of  several  families 
into  tribes  and  these  into  nations^  the  change  of  marriages  be- 
tween members  of  the  same  family  to  those  between  people  not 
related  causing  decided  improvement  of  stock.  At  first  these 
marriages  were  by  force  and  later  by  consent.  The  marriage 
relation  is  classified  as :  Consanguine,  when  between  brother  and 
sister ;  Punaluan  when  several  sisters  marry  brothers  interchange- 
ably and  jointly;  Syndasmian  when  a  single  pair  is  not  exclusive 
and  live  together  during  pleasure ;  Patriarchal  with  several  wives, 
Monogamian,  single  and  exclusive.  While  monogamy  prevails 
among  the  most  advanced  nations,  at  least  as  far  as  pretence 
goes,  it  dates  earlier  than  Christianity,  being  practiced  in  pagan 
Rome  and  among  many  primitive  tribes  who  regarded  it  as  ad- 
vantageous ;  many  birds  and  other  animals  pair  singly  for  similar 
reasons.  There  is  a  superstitious  tendency  to  ascribe  any  institu- 
tion regarded  as  advantageous  to  a  divine  origin,  disregarding 
the  conditions  of  other  kinds  elsewhere  as  having  equal  claims  to 
such  distinction. 

In  northern  Italy  and  Switzerland  are  the  remains  of  dwell- 
ings built  upon  piling  in  the  lakes  by  a  very  early  folk  now 
called  lake  dwellers  and  presumed  to  have  been  Celts.  On  the 
shores  near  these  dwellings  are  evidences  of  the  cultivation  of 
barley,  wheat  and  flax  and  that  the  horse,  ox,  sheep,  goat,  pig 
and  dog  were  domesticated.    The  lake  dwellers  had  considerable 

"H.  T.  Tozer,  A  History  of  Ancient  Geography,  1887. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  21 

skill  in  weaving,  rope  making  and  pottery,  but  they  had  no  pot- 
ter's wheel. 

Ancient  burial  places  called  barrows  are  scattered  over  Europe 
containing  the  bones  of  a  long-headed  and  later  a  broad-headed 
race.  The  broad  heads  are  supposed  to  have  been  those  of  the 
Celts,  who  drove  out  people  like  the  Basques  who  had  preceded 
them  into  Europe.  These  earlier  races  are  presumed  to  have 
descendants  in  the  dark  haired  and  dark  skinned  people  of  Wales, 
Ireland,  Corsica  and  elsewhere.  At  the  dawn  of  history  the  Iberi- 
ans found  in  Spain  and  southern  France  were  of  this  dark 
skinned  people,  and  their  conservative,  stubborn  dispositions  con- 
trasted with  those  of  the  volatile  Celts,  their  neighbors,  with 
whom  they  subsequently  mixed  and  become  known  as  Celtiberi- 
ans.  The  original  Bretons  of  the  northwest  similarly  were  super- 
seded by  the  Celts  in  modern  Brittany  from  the  British  isles  in 
the  fifth  century  The  Basque  descendants  of  these  Iberians  are 
found  today  in  Viscaya,  Alava,  Guipozcoa  and  Navarre  of  Spain 
and  in  the  French  department  of  basses  Pyrenees.  The  Ivernians 
of  Ireland,  now  also  lost  in  the  Celtic  population,  and  the  Liguri- 
ans  of  the  gulf  of  Genoa  who  were  later  absorbed  by  the  Romans, 
were  ancient  inhabitants.  Another  early  settlement  was  made 
by  Etruscans  in  Italy.  All  these  were  found  in  possession  of 
their  various  spots  in  Europe  by  the  swarms  of  immigrants  who 
•came  out  of  the  far  east. 

I.  Taylor^^  thinks  that  because  the  Greeks  called  the  Etrus- 
cans Turrhenoi  that  the  similarity  to  Turanian  might  indicate 
the  Etruscans  were  Turanians.  It  is  of  much  more  consequence 
what  a  tribe  calls  itself,  for  notoriously  foreigners  are  dubbed  any 
sort  of  name  usually  opprobrious,  by  adjacent  people.  The 
■Chinese  call  Europeans  foreign  devils  and  barbarian  was  a  favor- 
ite epithet  for  neighbors  to  apply  to  each  other.  The  Etruscans 
called  themselves  Rasenna  and  were  probably  Phoenicians. 

The  Latin,  Germanic  and  Slavic  descendants  of  the  Aryans 
form  the  bulk  of  the  European  population  today,  and  are  domi- 
nant races  all  over  the  world  especially  in  Europe,  America  and 
Australia.    The  people  found  in  Europe  before  the  Aryans  came 

^°  Etruscan  Researches,  Ch.  II. 


22  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

are  known  as  pre-Aryan,  there  were  other  races  called  non-Aryan ; 
these  were  the  ancient  Jews,  Finno-Tartars  or  the  Ural-Altaic 
family,  all  of  whom  reached  Europe  in  historic  times,  except  the 
Finns. 

All  tribes  the  world  over  have  been  or  remain  in  the  hunting 
and  fishing  stages  of  savagery,  or  the  second  stage,  the  pastoral, 
when  flocks  and  herds  of  animals  are  kept ;  the  third  stage  is  the 
farming,  which  has  been  gradually  improved  upon,  the  farming 
communities  representing  the  highest  races  and  the  hunting  the 
lowest,  while  the  shepherd  races  are  intermediate. 

Africa  is  assumed  to  be  divisible  between  four  races,  the 
negroes  proper,  with  an  enormous  number  of  tribes,  occupying 
central  Africa,  next  are  the  Fulahs  with  whom  the  Nubians  are 
associated,  between  Lake  Chad  and  the  Niger  river,  third  are 
the  Bantus  of  the  south,  fourth  the  bushmen  or  Bosjesman,  and 
included  with  them  sometimes  are  the  Hottentots  who  live  still 
farther  south.  Kaffirs  and  Bechuanas  are  Bantu  tribes.  North 
and  southeast  Africa  are  occupied  by  Semitic  and  Hamitic  races, 
the  latter  including  Abyssinians  and  Gallas.^^  The  union  of  the 
Aryan  invaders  of  North  Africa  with  the  ancient  coast  people 
originated  the  Numidians  and  Mauri  whose  descendants  are  the 
Libyans,  Berbers,  Moors  and  others,  who  are  regarded  as  sepa- 
rate from  the  negroes  and  Egyptians. ^^  The  Kaffirs  and  Hotten- 
tots were  the  main  aborigines  in  South  Africa.  Portuguese  dis- 
"covery  and  occupation  dates  from  i486  to  1806,  during  which  the 
Dutch  dispossessed  them  and  the  English  got  a  foothold  at  the 
Cape.  The  Dutch  made  slaves  of  the  blacks  and  the  English 
bought  the  negroes  and  freed  them,  the  Dutch  moving  north 
where  they  enslaved  more  negroes  and  worked  gold  mines  found 
by  Englishmen. 

The  Dutch  acted  on  the  idea  that  they  were  the  chosen  of 
God  to  make  everybody  work  for  them,  but  the  English  also  had 
a  mission  to  take  all  of  South  Africa  they  wanted,  especially 
where  there  were  gold  mines,  and  a  side  mission  was  to  free  the 
negroes  stolen  by  the  Dutch  and  others. 

Japan  had  as  unreliable  early  mythology  as  Europe.     It  was 

'^^A.  H.  Keane,  The  African  Races. 
"T.  Mommsen,  History  of  Rome,  Bk.  8,  Ch.  XIII. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  23 

not  till  A.  D.  600  when  Buddhism  was  introduced  that  reliable 
records  began.  It  was  ruled  by  Shoguns  from  A.  D.  1190  to 
1867,  but  the  Mikado  was  the  theoretical  head.  There  never 
were  two  emperors,  as  was  asserted  by  European  writers,  but  a 
real  infant,  who  is  powerless,  figured  as  ruler,  and  he  was 
changed  for  another  when  he  adolesced.  When  Commodore 
Perry,  the  American  envoy,  arrived,  times  were  ripe  for  change, 
with  many  natives  anxious  to  ride  into  power  over  the  Shogun's 
fall.  Japan  awoke  to  civilized  methods,  its  condition  was  like 
that  of  a  child  threatened  with  idiocy  through  being  shut  out 
from  the  rest  of  the  world.  While  Chinamen  seem  unable  to 
assimilate  European  ideas,  apparently  through  their  brains  having 
crystallized,  so  to  speak,  at  an  infantile  stage  of  development,  the 
bright  little  Japs  are  not  only  able  to  imitate  but  to  originate,  and 
many  are  the  valuable  additions  they  have  made  to  science  and 
manufacture  since  aroused  to  occidental  methods,  while  the 
Chinese  stay  at  a  servile  imitative  stage. 

China  proper  was  at  first  very  small,  its  wall  was  built  in  the 
third  century  before  Christ,  and  the  origin  of  these  Mongols  is 
quite  obscure,  though  they  are  particular  in  assigning  2,269,381 
years  to  their  country.  They  go  beyond  this  also  in  describing 
a  period  when  there  was  nothing,  and  they  have  a  class  of  phil- 
osophers who  go  still  earlier. 

Philologists  find  affinities  between  the  speech  of  the  early 
Mongols  and  that  of  the  Akkads  of  the  Mesopotamian  region. 
Chinese  literature  dates  from  the  sixth  century  before  Christ 
and  periods  previous  to  this  in  their  writings  are  not  authentic. 
The  earliest  Mongol  invaders  fought  the  aborigines  along  the 
Yellow  River.    Later  Jingis  Khan,  A.  D.  121 5,  conquered  China. 

The  great  Yellow  River  of  China  is  called  "The  Sorrow  of 
Han,"  because  it  would  change  its  course  through  thousands  of 
square  miles  of  land  which  it  swept  away,  drowning  or  starving 
off  countries  as  though  its  people  were  of  no  more  consequence 
to  nature  than  so  many  ants  or  worms.  A  drought  in  the  moun- 
tains has  killed  a  million  Chinese  by  famine  in  a  few  months. 

A  suggestion  has  been  made  that  can  be  taken  for  what  it  is 
worth,  that  the  slant  eyes  of  Mongols  are  inherited  from  squir- 


24  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

rel-like  nut  eating  rodents  whose  eyes  are  thus  slanted  through 
looking  at  the  nut  as  it  was  gnawed. 

Confucius,  or  Kung-fu-tzee,  the  great  Chinese  philosopher, 
was  born  B.  C.  551  and  did  not  claim  to  be  gifted  above  others, 
he  merely  strove  after  the  good  and  to  know  the  truth.  He 
taught  that  perfection  of  manhood  was  the  true  aim  in  life,  while 
sincerity,  faithfulness  and  truthfulness  afforded  the  groundwork 
for  all  his  teaching.  He  was  agnostic  as  to  future  life  and  he 
regarded  death  as  merely  in  the  course  of  nature  and  not  to  be 
dreaded.  His  theory  of  good  government  was  to  begin  with  the 
individual,  to  rectify  him  and  the  state  would  become  rectified.  . 

When  asked  how  to  do  away  with  thieves,  he  said :  ''If  you 
were  not  yourselves  covetous  they  would  not  steal,  even  if  you 
were  to  pay  them  to  do  so."  Sin  was  to  him  the  cultivation  of 
nature  upon  the  plane  of  the  small,  mean,  selfish,  animal  man. 
This  he  considered  might  come  from  heredity,  accident  of  birth, 
environment,  education  or  ignorance,  over  which  the  sinner  may 
have  had  no  control,  and  for  which  he  was  not  accountable.  He 
thought  that  rewards  and  punishments  accompanied  all  deeds, 
those  living  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  their  being  receiving 
noble  character  with  contentment  and  happiness,  while  those  on 
low  animal  planes  had  ignoble  characters  with  anxiety  and  un- 
happiness.  He  pitied  those  who  indulged  greed  and  ignoble 
passion.     Prevailing  religious  beliefs  he  looked  upon  as  childish. 

Malays  came  from  the  southeast  regions  of  Asia,  from  the 
peninsula  of  farther  India,  and  they  spread  south,  east  and  west 
over  the  island  world.  The  first  occupation  of  Sumatra  and 
Java  was  in  B.  C.  1000,  or  earlier,  about  the  time  of  the  Aryan 
migration  to  North  India.  The  Malays  are  energetic,  quick  to 
perceive,  genial  but  unscrupulous,  cruel  and  revengeful.  Verac- 
ity is  unknown,  the  love  of  gain  is  their  strongest  affection,  and 
this  has  caused  them  to  be  navigators,  pirates,  merchants, 
explorers.  They  gained  Madagascar  on  the  far  west  and  found 
five  and  a  half  million  negroids  there,  outnumbering  them,  but 
the  eight  hundred  thousand  Malay  Hovas  are  the  masters.-^  The 
Maoris  of  New  Zealand  are  a  higher  type  of  Malay,  they  came 

^^D.  G.  Brinton,  Races  and  Peoples,  Lecture  VIII. 


EARLIEST    MEN.  35 

to  New  Zealand  about  A.  D.  1300  from  Tahati  and  Samoa. 
Some  ethnologists  place  their  migrations  back  to  3000  years  ago. 

High  mountains  with  streams  from  icy  peaks  appear  to  have 
favored  the  development  of  the  ape-like  man,  who  still  further 
advanced  as  the  warm  seas  gave  place  to  plains  and  he  gradually 
spread  over  them  in  search  of  prey  as  a  stone  age  savage.  Ages 
pass,  and  some  genius  among  them  fashioned  his  stone  imple- 
ments smoothly  by  polishing  and  doubtless  many  such  innovators 
paid  the  penalty  of  making  improvements  by  being  killed  for 
being  in  league  with  evil  spirits.  While  still  a  hunter  and  fisher, 
he  found  pieces  of  copper  ore  that  could  be  hammered  into  shape 
for  tools,  and  the  most  prodigious  step  was  taken  when,  with 
fire  he  melted  and  moulded  his  tools,  spears  and  arrow  heads 
mainly.  By  accidental  admixture  of  other  metals  with  the  copper 
the  so-called  bronze  age  arrived,  merely  because  these  aborigines 
did  not  know  enough  about  the  union  of  metals  to  make  bronze 
until  the  knowledge  was  forced  upon  them  by  finding  that  the 
new  castings  were  harder  than  the  copper  ones.  The  iron  age 
was  the  last,  and  before  this  the  raising  of  herds  and  flocks  caused 
many  tribes  to  pass  from  the  hunting  to  the  shepherd  stage. 
The  farming  stage  came  to  some  tribes  while  still  in  either  the 
stone  or  bronze  period.  Nor  is  it  correct  to  imagine  that  all 
peoples  came  through  these  eras  at  the  same  time,  for  there  are 
today  some  who  remain  in  the  stone  age,  the  copper  age,  the 
hunting  stage,  or  the  shepherd  stage,  as  survivals  from  earlier 
dates. 

The  general  fondness  for  hunting  and  fishing  shows  that  it  is 
an  easy  drop  backward  to  the  practices  of  these  ages,  and  I  have 
personally  observed  that  Germanic  races,  such  as  the  English 
and  Scandinavian,  if  mixed  with  North  American  Indians,  try 
to  lift  the  latter  to  their  civilized  plane,  but  French  Canadians 
and  other  Latins  drop  readily  to  the  savage  level,  and  the  Mexi- 
cans make  the  worst  renegades  among  the  red  men.  The  fiercest 
compound  I  ever  saw  was  a  mixture  of  French  Canadian,  Black- 
foot  Indian,  Chinaman  and  Negro. 

But  the  more  we  know  of  historic  and  pre-historic  people  the 
more  it  appears  that  mixture  upon  mixture  interminably,  has 
occurred,  and  that,  strictly  speaking,  a  pure  race  does  not  exist. 


26  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Man  is  still  a  baby  so  far  as  intelligence  is  concerned  and  the 
possibilities  of  what  he  might  grow  to  be.  It  has  taken  millions 
of  years  for  him  to  think  of  giving  up  slavery.  It  was  only  a 
century  ago  he  learned  about  the  power  of  steam,  and  fifty 
years  ago  that  electricity  might  become  his  servant ;  such  things 
as  navigation  ^nd  engineering  have  just  dawned  on  him,  and  he 
has  yet  to  appreciate  what  has  been  discovered  about  health  and 
disease,  the  pack  still  listening  to  such  fakirs  as  Eddyites,  as  the 
Africans  do  to  their  witch  doctors.  He  has  still  his  brutish 
instincts,  his  savage  love  of  ornament.  Even  in  organized  com- 
binations his  robber  traits  are  strongly  apparent.  But  Evolution 
shows  that  he  advances. 


CHAPTER  11. 
THE  ARYANS. 

Animals  in  abundance  roamed  and  contended  along  the  shores 
of  the  primeval  sea  that  washed  both  sides  of  the  Himalaya  range 
of  icy  peaked  mountains  where  our  blonde  Aryan  ancestry 
originated  and  developed  on  the  high,  wide  Pamir  plateau,  a 
tableland  where  rank  vegetation  grew  beside  broad,  rapid  rivers 
fed  by  melting  glaciers. 

The  flat  plains  of  this  ''roof  of  the  world"  induced  changes  in 
the  habits  of  the  ape-like  men  who  lived  there ;  scampering  over 
these  prairies,  their  legs  were  lengthened,  and  forsaking  the  tree 
life  of  their  ancestors  their  arms  became  shorter.  Pithecanthro- 
pus was  mainly  erect  and  had  outgrown  the  baby  practice  of  going 
on  all  fours,  and  his  descendants  grew  still  more  erect  until 
hands  were  no  longer  used  as  feet  and  the  hind  feet  ceased  to  be 
used  as  hands.  Chasing  his  prey  and  keeping  a  sharp  lookout 
for  enemies,  perception  and  adroitness  were  developed,  together 
with  fleetness,  a  more  general  intellignce,  as  he  was  able  to  do 
many  things  other  animals  could  not  do,  such  as  subsisting  upon 
a  mixed  diet  of  fruits  and  meats,  he  could  travel  farther  and 
thrive  better  than  animals  hampered  in  diet  and  in  other  respects. 

Oscar  PescheP  remarks  that  it  is  easy  for  those  who  live  in  a 
temperate  zone  to  recognize  the  favorable  course  of  civilization 
of  the  high  plateaux  within  the  tropics.  Their  inhabitants  escape 
the  enervating  atmosphere  of  the  sultry  lowlands;  they  are 
obliged  to  provide  clothing  and  shelter  as  a  protection  against 
the  weather;  to  avoid  starvation  they  are  obliged  to  till  the 
ground  and  store  provisions  and  forced  to  combine  for  various 
purposes.  Sayce  holds  that  the  Aryans  Inhabited  a  cold  country, 
their  seasons  were  three  in  number,  perhaps  four,  and  not  two, 
as  would  have  been  the  case  had  they  lived  south  of  the  temperate 

^  The  Races  of  Men,  p.  443. 

27 


28  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

zone.  They  were  nomad  herdsmen  Hving  in  hovels  that  could  be 
erected  in  a  few  hours  and  left  again  as  the  cattle  moved  into 
higher  ground  with  the  approach  of  spring,  or  descended  into  the 
valley  as  the  v/inter  advanced.  Grinding  corn  was  unknown, 
and  crushed  spelt  was  eaten  instead  of  bread.  Agriculture  was 
rude  and  needles  of  bone  were  used  to  sew  skins  together,  possi- 
bly there  was  spinning  and  weaving,  though  the  latter  does  not 
appear  to  have  advanced  beyond  plaiting  reeds  and  withes.  The 
community  lived  in  the  stone  age,  they  made  tools  of  stone  and 
bone,  and  if  they  used  gold  or  meteoric  iron  it  was  of  the  un- 
wrought  pieces  picked  up  from  the  ground  and  worn  as  orna- 
ments. They  did  not  work  metals.  As  among  the  savage  tribes 
the  various  degrees  of  relationship  were  minutely  distinguished 
and  named,  even  the  wife  of  the  husband's  brother  receiving  a 
special  title,  but  they  could  count  as  far  as  a  hundred.  They 
believed  in  a  multitude  of  ghosts  and  goblins,  making  offerings 
to  the  dead  and  seeing  in  the  bright  sky  a  potent  deitv.  The 
birch,  the  pine  and  the  withy  were  known  to  them ;  so  also  was 
the  bear,  wolf,  hare,  mouse,  snake,  goose,  raven,  quail  and  owl. 
Cattle,  sheep,  goats  and  swine  were  all  kept,  the  dog  was  domes- 
ticated, and  probably  the  horse.  Boats  with  oars  were  used, 
the  boats  being  possibly  hollowed  out  of  trunks  of  trees. 

While  many  of  these  high  tablelands  were  fertile  in  these 
earlier  periods,  great  changes  have  followed  up  to  modern  times. 
There  are  still  pastoral  regions  scattered  about  these  plateaux, 
and  the  soil  is  rich  and  yields  sweet  and  nourishing  grasses,  but 
the  elevation  is  too  high  for  farming.  Mulberry  trees  thrive 
well  and  afford  flour  for  the  natives  found  there.  The  area  of 
the  Pamir  plateau  is  37,000  square  miles,  divided  into  flat  valleys 
running  northeast  and  southwest.  It  lies  buried  in  snow  half 
of  the  year  and  does  not  produce  sufficient  for  the  sparse  settle- 
ments. Here  are  the  headwaters  of  the  famous  Oxus  river,  and 
great  interest  has  centered  about  these  highlands,  owing  to 
traditions  connected  with  their  having  been  in  remote  periods  the 
location  of  great  events  and  dense  populations  who  have  left  their 
traces  in  ruined  cities  and  in  legends.  It  is  the  Tsung-ling  of 
Chinese  writers,  the  northern  Imaus  of  Ptolemy,  and  the  moun- 
tain   Parnassus   of    Aristotle ;     "the   greatest   of   all    that    exists 


THE    ARYANS.  2g 

toward  the  winter  sunrise ;"  it  is  known  as  Bam-i-dunia,  or  "the 
roof  of  the  world,"  and  modern  geographers  have  called  it  "the 
heart  of  Asia,"  and  the  "central  boss  of  Asia."  The  geographical 
indications,  according  to  Reclus,^  point  to  it  as  Meru,  the  scene 
of  the  primeval  Aryans'  paradise.  Old  Parsee  traditions  locate 
it  as  the  origin  and  nucleus  of  the  Aryan  migrations.  And  it  is 
here  that  the  Mohammedan  invaders  identify  the  Gihon  and 
Pison  rivers,  and  claim  the  Oxus  valley  as  the  former  paradise 
and  other  things  indicate  that  here  was  the  "cradle  of  the  human 
race." 

The  twin  rivers  Oxus  (Amu-daria)and  the  Sir-daria  flow  now 
into  the  Aral  sea,  and  in  prehistoric  times  they  formed  a  single 
broad  river  flowing  northwest  when  the  glacial  torrents  were 
higher,  running  into  the  Caspian  sea,  on  the  west  side  of  which 
are  the  Caucasus  mountains,  with  old  marine  shores  visible  500 
feet  above  the  present  water  level,  indicating  that  both  the  Aral 
and  Caspian  seas  were  formerly  one  body  of  water  and  pointing 
to  an  era  when  most  of  Asia  and  Europe  were  ocean  beds.  The 
inference  that  the  Aral  could  not  have  been  part  of  the  ocean  be- 
cause it  is  less  salt  than  the  Mediterranean  is  from  a  failure  to 
consider  that  glacial  floods  have  been  freshening  that  sea  from 
mountain  streams  since  the  original  ocean  receded. 

At  present  the  hills  of  the  Oxus  grow  pines  and  junipers  below 
their  glaciers,  and  in  some  valleys  apricots  and  other  fruits. 
Marco  Polo  spoke  of  the  fine  grazing  there  for  stock,  the  ruins  of 
cities,  and  that  there  had  been  many  people  in  the  region  for- 
merly. But  the  lakes  have  become  deserts,  and  the  sand  has 
filled  and  changed  the  river  courses,  driving  the  Oxus  away  from 
the  Caspian  to  the  Aral,  destroying  the  vegetation,  and  depopu- 
lating this  once  thriving  country.  The  space  between  the  Sir- 
daria  and  the  Ural  mountains  is  known  as  the  region  of  black 
sands ;  between  the  Oxus  and  the  Sir-daria,  that  of  red  sands, 
and  south  of  the  Chu,  white  sands,  and  by  their  commingUng 
the  entire  desert  is  ashy  gray  in  color.  The  Caspian  is  more 
salty  than  the  Aral,  which  is  only  brackish.  There  are  rivers 
all  about  that  dreadful  desert  of  Gobi  that  end  in  the  sky,  for 
the  streams  from  melted  glaciers,  wide  and  deep  at  first,  become 

'Asia,  Vol.  I. 


30  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

shallow  and  narrow,  and  are  finally  drunk  by  the  hot,  dry  sands ; 
while  a  portion  passes  under  the  soil,  the  greater  part  evaporates, 
so  the  rivers  have  no  mouths ;  rainfalls  have  often  been  observed 
to  disappear  before  reaching  the  ground,  the  heat  causing  the  rain 
to  vaporize.  This  desert  country  was  once  adapted  to  the 
needs  of  the  people ;  it  was  fertile,  covered  with  flocks  and  herds, 
and  abounding  in  animals,  vegetation  and  pure  water,  with  a 
sufficiently  congenial  climate  to  cause  it  to  be  spoken  of  by  many 
generations  of  the  descendants  of  those  who'  had  been  forced 
to  leave  it. 

By  the  inclination  to  "ancientism,"  or  regarding  far-off  days 
as  better  than  the  present,  coupled  with  the  disposition  to  exag- 
gerate, that  was  customary  in  the  childish  period  of  the  world, 
and  the  oriental  inability  to  confine  one's  self  to  facts,  it  seems 
that  the  camp-fire  tales  of  the  ancient  Munchausens  combined 
into  legends  of  a  paradise.  The  INIohammedan  traditions  place 
their  paradise  along  the  Oxus,  while  some  of  the  Semitic  races 
refer  theirs  to  the  upper  Mesopotamian  valley,  north  of  the 
Tigris.  With  all  races  it  was  always  somewhere  else  than  \vhere 
they  then  lived.  For  that  matter  the  Aryans  could  have  devel- 
oped in  the  Thibetan  highlands  on  the  "roof  of  the  world,"  and 
descended  into  the  Oxus  valley  as  the  ocean  fell  lower  and  made 
new  garden-spots  for  them,  while  the  great  Babylonian  civiliza- 
tion had  an  independent  source  near  the  Black  sea,  with  the 
people  gradually  leaving  the  high  Persian  plateau  and  settling 
along  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris  rivers  as  the  waters  abated, 
becoming  mixed  with  the  Akkads  and  Sumerians  of  the  ^lesopo- 
tamian  plains,  coming  from  other  points  of  the  compass  and  from 
other  centers  of  development — from  lower  animals  into  men.  That 
races  need  not  have  a  single  source,  and,  least  of  all,  have  come 
from  a  single  pair,  is  evident  in  regarding  such  descents  as  that 
of  the  several  breeds  of  horses  which  have  come  from  similar 
stock,  but  not  the  same  pair.-"^  Also  that  American  fossil  horses 
are  proven  to  have  evolved  in  direct  lines  wholly  distinct  from 
the  horses  of  Europe. 

The  Aryans  sought  other  lands  when  their  chief  river  became 
a  flood  three  or  four  times  a  year,  and  the  hostile  Turanians 

^  Darwin,  Origin  of  Species,  Ch.  VII. ;  Part  I.,  p.  i8o. 


THE    ARYANS.  3I 

harassed  them  and  sands  drifted  over  many  of  their  most  fertile 
countries.      Migrations  from  these  parts  appear  to  have  occurred 
at  different  stages  of  Aryan  development,  as  they  passed  through 
the  stone  age,  while  hunters,  and  became  pastoral  and  finally 
agricultural.       We   may   arbitrarily   date   the   earliest    wave   of 
emigration  from  Arya  at  about  50,000  years  ago,  as  there  is  some 
evidence  of  the  southern  route  around  the  Caspian  sea  having 
been  preferred,  presumably  because  the  northern  may  have  pre- 
sented physical  obstacles.      It  had,  down  to  historical  times,  the 
reputation  of  being  full  of  icy  terrors.      Explorers  may  have 
returned  to  the  Oxus  and  informed  the  parent  tribes  of  routes 
and  other  particulars,  resulting  in  a  steady  annual  outpouring  of 
young  people  toward  the  Caspian,  then  southwardly  and  to  the 
west,  until  the  south  coast  of  the  Black  sea  was  passed,  when 
these  earliest  of  immigrants   spread  over  northern  and  central 
Europe.      These  first  offshoots  of  the  Aryans  became  the  Celts, 
and  as  rabbits  in  Australia,  and  sparrows  in  America,  thrived 
and  increased  in  the  new  countries,  so  these  newcomers  found 
Europe  more  congenial  than  Asia.      Long  before  this  Turanian 
tribes,   Finns,   Lapps   and   Basques,   roamed  through  the   whole 
continent,  fighting  occasional  bands  of  cave-dwellers.      All  who 
were  found  in  Europe  by  the  Celts  were  killed  off,  driven  away 
or  mingled  with.      Tribe  after  tribe  of  the  Celts  split  off  and 
fought  one  another,  and  it  was  not  till  several  tribes  confederated 
that  they  became  formidable.      Independent  tribes  were  speedily 
subjugated  here  and  there,  but  they  left  enough  of  each  other 
to   spread   widely    into   hunting   and   fishing  bodies,    and    their 
dialects    grew    into   separate    languages,    though    still    retaining 
their  family  resemblances.      The  lake-dwellers  of  Europe  were 
very  likely  Celts,  as  are  the  Bretons  of  France,  the  Welsh,  High- 
land Scotch,  Celtic  Irish,  Cornish,  Manx  and  the  main  stock  of 
the  French. 

Wliile  the  Aryans  were  still  in  the  stone  age,  though  several 
thousand  years  later,  the  Greek  and  Roman  stock  left  the  old 
Oxus  region  and  gradually  settled  near  the  northern  shores  of 
the  Mediterranean,  and  found  the  Etruscans  had  settled  in  Italy 
before  them,  having  migrated  from  Phoenicia,  a  country  of 
Semites.     Even  in  these  times  hosts  of  people  do  not  know  their 


32  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

own  grandparents  or  cousins,  though  very  hkely  Celts  and 
Romans  would  have  differed  and  fought  just  the  same  had  they 
been  aware  of  their  relationship,  so  the  Celts  from  the  north 
bothered  the  Greeks  and  Romans  as  much  as  the  Turanian 
northerners  did  their  Aryan  neighbors. 

Still  later  the  Teutonic  branch  started  away  from  Arya,  taking 
a  northward  route  around  the  Caspian,  an  early  branch  of  cohe- 
sive, stalwart  and  therefore  strong  people,  being  the  Scandina- 
vian. The  Celts  and  Teutons  contended  in  their  northern  regions 
and  as  a  legacy  of  those  far-off  encounters  we  have  inherited  the 
differences  of  opinion  between  the  Irish  and  English,  the  French 
and  Germans. 

A  final  branch  of  Aryans  called  the  Slavs  was  driven  north 
and  northeast  by  Turanians,  but  the  Slavs  finally  dominated  and 
have  penned  up  many  of  their  enemies  in  mountain  places,  or 
driven  them  to  less  hospitable  regions.  The  Russian  descend- 
ants of  the  Slavs  of  today  are  trying  to  take  away  the  remnant 
of  the  liberties  of  the  Finns,  whom  they  drove  westward  in  far- 
off  ages,  whence  the  Teutons  drove  them  north  into  the  swamps 
and  hills  of  Finland.  Sweden  founded  the  first  Russian  union 
of  Slavonian  tribes  which  sought  possession  of  Turkey. 

All  that  was  left  of  the  parent  Aryan  settlements  broke  up  and 
went  south.  Some  catastrophe  caused  them  to  forsake  their  land 
and  leave  in  two  streams,  one  of  which  passed  ^over  the  Hindu- 
Kush  and  Himalayan  mountains  to  the  Punjab  and  Ganges,  and 
became  the  controlling  race  in  India.  The  other  branch  went 
southwest  and  became  Medes  and  Persians,  who  called  their 
country  Iran,  which  is  the  name  retained  by  the  modern  Persians 
for  their  present  boundaries.  Modern  Armenians  are  from  the 
ancient  Persians,  and  so  they  are  also  Aryans. 

The  Aryan  settlers  in  India  developed  a  written  literature  in 
a  language  called  Sanscrit,  which  dates  back  to  B.  C.  1500,  and 
ceased  to  be  spoken  in  B.  C.  200.  The  Aryans  settled  in  India 
about  B.  C.  2000,  when  Assyria  was  under  Babylon  and  Memphis 
was  ruled  by  Hyksos.  The  rajahs  of  Arya  fought  not  only 
the  southern  low  castes,  but  among  themselves  also,  just  as  the 
Celts  have  done.  The  Hindoo  Rig- Veda  is  a  collection  of  hymns 
and   prayers   dating  from  the    loth   to  the   15th  century  before 


THE    ARYANS.  33 

Christ,  and  Sanscrit  descended  from  the  original  Aryan  language 
just  as  the  Persian  and  European  languages  came  from  the  same 
roots.  The  spoken  language  separated,  as  do  all  languages,  into 
the  learned  and  the  unlearned,  the  Sanscrit  was  the  former  and 
the  Hindoo  was  the  latter.  Sanscrit  was  intentionally  made  com- 
plex and  was  devoted  to  religion  and  literature,  beyond  the  touch 
of  the  vulgar  herd,  to  enable  the  lofty  to  take  advantage  of  the 
lowly.  All  important  literary  languages,  living  or  dead,  are 
Aryan,  except  Hebrew,  Arabic  and  Egyptian.  In  the  Persian 
branch  of  the  Aryan  language  is  written  the  Zend-Avesta  of  the 
great  teacher  Zoroaster.  The  Parsees,  or  fire  worshipers  of 
modern  India,  were  followers  of  Zoroaster. 

According  to  von  Ihering*  the  Aryans  were  originally  a  pas- 
toral people,  living  in  a  hot  zone,  with  their  cattle  herded  in  the 
open,  as  no  word  for  stable  was  in  their  language ;  leather  aprons 
were  their  ancient  dress,  and  their  migrations  began  in  March 
and  stopped  the  last  of  May.  He  insists  that  they  were  ignorant 
of  agriculture  till  the  Akkadians  taught  them  to  plough  and 
plant  later,  that  they  were  shepherds,  settled  and  numerous,  did 
not  live  in  towns,  knew  nothing  of  metals,  their  laws  were  unde- 
veloped, they  made  sacrifices  to  the  dead,  and  brought  the  widow- 
burning  suttee  into  India ;  that  the  present  condition  of  the  low- 
caste  Hindus  is  probably  that  of  the  ancient  Aryans ;  that  hunger 
was  the  cause  of  the  emigrations ;  that  they  put  the  aged  to 
death,  and  also  destroyed  the  weak  and  sickly  children,  as  their 
Roman  descendants  did  later. 

Kafiristan  is  a  country  near  the  Pamir  plateau  in  Asia,  near 
the  region  from  whence  the  original  Aryans  emigrated,  and  is 
of  great  interest  as  the  present  home  of  a  yellow-haired,  blue- 
eyed  people  called  Kaffirs,  or  infidels,  by  the  Mohammedans, 
because  they  refuse  to  give  up  their  ancient  religion,  and  they  are 
constantly  fighting  the  Musselmans.  They  are  free,  but  not 
united,  the  patriarchal  system  prevailing;  the  tribes  are  but 
loosely  held  together,  and  are  often  at  war  with  one  another, 
much  as  their  Irish  relatives  have  been.  Owing  to  their  appear- 
ance they  call  themselves  the  ''brothers  of  the  English."     Their 

*  The  Evolution  of  the  Aryans,  by  Rudolph  von  Ihering,  1897. 


34  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

isolation  may  have  enabled  them  to  preserve  ancient  Aryai: 
features  as  a  survival  from  those  remote  periods.  There  is  sig- 
nificance in  Teutonic  and  Celtic  young,  especially  English  and 
Scandinavian,  having  yellow  hair  and  blue  eyes  with  fair  com- 
plexions, however  brunette  they  may  develop  later,  suggesting 
that  as  earliest  racial  traits  appear  first  in  the  infant  the  Aryan 
foundation  and  origin  of  our  people  may  be  plainly  observed  in 
some  of  our  children. 

The  first  people  known  in  Ireland  were  Fomiorians,  of 
Turanian  origin,  dark,  low-browed,  stunted,  utterly  savage 
hunters  and  fishermen,  ignorant  of  metals  and  pottery  and  possi- 
bly of  fire,  using  stone  hammers.  Many  Irish  names  are  said  to 
date  from  them.  They  appeared  like  Lapps.  The  pre-Aryan 
Ivernians,  who  were  the  possible  Iberians  of  the  British  Isles, 
related  to  those  in  Spain  and  to  the  Georgians  of  the  Caucasus, 
were  forced  back  into  the  recesses  of  Scotland  and  Ireland,  and 
next  came  the  Celts  in  two  divisions,  the  Gaels  and  Britons.  The 
Cymri  or  Kymri,  hence  Cambria,  was  a  great  Celtic  family,  to 
which  the  Britons  belonged  and  which  it  was  claimed  came  from 
Asia  and  settled  in  Europe  B.  C.  1500.  Gaelic  is  the  northern 
branch  of  the  Celtic  language,  which  includes  among  other  off- 
shoots ancient  French,  Irish,  Erse,  or  Highland  Scottish,  and 
Manx.  Then  there  settled  in  Ireland  the  Belgic  colony  of 
Firbolgs,  a  higher  race,  but  short,  dark  and  swarthy.  Patricius, 
a  Celt  of  Gaul,  introduced  Christianity  in  the  fifth  century,  but 
not  the  papal  kind,  and  invaders  later  were  Twatha-da-Danaans 
in  the  east  country,  believed  to  have  been  large  blue-eyed  Scan- 
dinavian kinsmen  of  the  Norsemen,  or  Danes.  They  were  con- 
quered 'by  the  Milesians  or  Scoti,  giving  to  Ireland  the  name  of 
Scotia,  by  which  name  it  was  known  down  to  the  twelfth  century, 
the  conquered  being  driven  into  the  forests  and  hills,  from  which 
they  emerged  with  unpleasant  effects  upon  their  conquerors.  In 
the  ninth  and  tenth  centuries  the  Danes  swarmed  from  all  the 
Baltic  islands  and  shores.  Galls  means  foreigners.  The  Fin- 
galls  were  white  foreigners,  the  Norwegians,  while  the  Dubh- 
galls  were  black  foreigners  from  Jutland.  A  large  tract  north 
of  Dublin  is  called  Fingall.  The  Vikings  settled  Caithness  and 
Sutherland,  while  Limerick,  Cork,  Dublin,  Waterford,  Wexford 


THE    ARYANS.  35 

became  petty  Danish  kingdoms  till  overturned  by  Brian.    Roman 
historians  describe  the  Britons  as  a  blonde  race  with  yellow  hair, 
but  their  descendants  in  Wales  and  Cornwall  have  dark  com- 
plexions and  brown  or  black  hair.      Picts  and  Scots  were  the 
names  of  the  early  inhabitants.      The   word  pict  was  Roman, 
meaning  painted  or  tattooed,   and  the   Scots  called   themselves 
Cruithnig,  meaning  tattooed,  in  their  own  language.      The  Scots 
were  from  the  north  of  Ireland,  having  the  Celtic  name  Scoti.'^ 
Britons  of  the  sixth  century  were  restricted  to  the  west  of  the 
island,  the  eastern  part  being  under  German  influence.     Wales, 
Ireland,  Cornwall  and  the  isle  of  Man  are  Celtic.      The  English, 
Irish  and  Scotch  today  are  Danes,  Swedes,  Norwegians,  Celts, 
Saxons,  Angles,  Jutes,  Low  Dutch,  German,  French  and  Nor- 
man.     The   Anglo-Saxon   and  Jute  invasions   were  practically 
wars  of  extermination   from  the  sixth  to  the  eighth  centuries. 
The  Celtic  race  is  represented  mainly  only  in  Wales  and  in  -the 
west  parts  of  Scotland  and  Ireland.     Later  the  Danes  and  Nor- 
mans brought  a  slight  Germanic,  Scandinavian  influence,  but  no 
marked  modification  of  the  Saxon  stock.      The  Angles,  Saxons 
.and  Jutes  of  the  fifth  and  seventh  centuries  fused  with  the  Danes. 
Though  the  kings  grew  stronger  and  the  nobles  and  people  grew 
further  apart,  their  townships,  hundreds  and  moots  made  and 
administered  law.      Anglo-Saxon  is  an  absurd  designation,  simi- 
lar to  other  accidental  names  for  mixed  peoples.     Green  says  that 
conquest  begat  the  king,  for  in  the  war  against  the  British  a 
common  leader  was  wanted,  hence  the  sons  of  Henquist  became 
kings  in  Kent,  the  sons  of  Aelle  kings  in  Sussex,  the  west  Saxons 
chose  Cerdic,  and  with  the  king  came  the  slave.^'      It  was  by 
survival  of  the  strongest  that  Northumbria  dominated  in  England 
in  the  seventh  century.     "Over-kings"  were  practically  emperors 
through   the   strongest   king   reducing    other    kings,    or,    what 
amounted  to  the  same  thing,  the  conquered  kings  were  reduced 
to  dukes  and  but  one  king  was  left  to  reign  over  all.     After  the 
English  tribes  had  conquered  the  Britons  in  A.  D.  518  they  quar- 
reled and  fought  each  other  for  overlordship.      Aethelbert  estab- 
lished supremacy  over  the  Saxons  of  Middlesex  and  Essex,  and 

'J.  Rhys,  Celtic  Brittain,  Ch.  VII. 

"John  Richard  Green,  A  Short  History  of  the  EnprJish  People,  p.  18. 


36  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  English  of  East  AngHa  and  Mercia  as  far  north  as  the 
Humber  and  the  Trent. 

WilHam  the  First  introduced  the  French  language,  laws  and 
customs  into  England  in  1066.  Law  pleadings  were  changed 
back  to  English  by  Edward  III  in  1362.  Mathew  Arnold^  says : 
"English  is  a  vast  obscure  Cymric  Celtic  base  with  a  vast  visible 
Germanic  superstructure.  Its  humor  is  a  dash  of  Celtic  impulse 
and  fancy  clashing  with  our  Germanicism."  This  is  still  more 
pronounced  in  America,  where  the  Celto-Germanic  fusion  starts 
afresh.  The  Goths  and  Vandals  became  Romans,  the  Normans 
became  Saxons  in  England  and  Irish  in  Ireland,  the  Anglo- 
Saxon-Norman  conquest  introduced  the  feudal  system,  DeBurghs 
became  Burkes,  Veres  became  MacSweenies,  the  English  became 
Celticized  in  Ireland  as  Spaniards  were  Cubans  and  English 
turned  to  Americans,  but  it  is  amusing  that  the  Irish,  who  cling 
so  tenaciously  to  the  prejudices  of  their  remote  ancestry,  consist 
of  Danes,  Norwegians  and  English,  with  Scotch,  German  and 
Jutes.  Much  of  this  hatred,  however,  is  due  to  great  injustice 
heaped  upon  those  forced  to  live  in  Ireland  irrespective  of  their 
origin  and  a  political  religion  keeps  them  too  ignorant  to  enable 
them  to  find  an  intelligent  way  out  of  their  difficulties. 

The  ecclesiastical  grab  game  proceeded  to  absorb  public  and 
private  property  in  England  until  the  church,  as  in  Spain,  Italy 
and  elsewhere,  owned  such  vast  areas  of  land  that  national  decay 
was  threatened  till  the  secular  grab  came  in  the  law  of  mortmain ; 
the  common  people  are  best  off  when  the  mighty,  especially  priest 
and  king,  grab  from  one  another, 

London  was  supposed  to  have  originated  in  a  camp  of  Roman 
soldiers,  the  name  meaning  lake  fort  or  Leyn-din  in  British,  a 
piece  of  high  ground  rising  out  of  a  lake  swamp  and  estuary 
A.  D.  43.  In  61  it  was  destroyed  by  Iceni,  under  Boadicea,  when 
70,000  Roman  colonists  perished.  In  1666  occurred  the  great 
fire,  preceded  the  year  before  by  the  great  plague  in  London. 
The  streets  were  first  lighted  in  1685.  A  set  of  silly  kings  fell 
upon  England  in  the  seventeenth  century,  the  Stuarts,  and  finally 
Cromwell  stripped  away  much  of  the  nonsense  of  royalty  and 

'  On  the  Study  of  Celtic  Literature,  1883,  p.  64. 


THE    ARYANS. 


37 


the  government  of  England  now  rests  with  parHament  for  all 
time.      Practically  a  republic,  calling  itself  a  monarchy. 

A  remarkable  warrior  ability  in  the  Irish  affords  many  noted 
generals  in  England,  France,  America  and  elsewhere,  such  as 
Grant,  Sherman,  Sheridan,  Wellington,  Roberts,  Kitchener, 
MacMahon.  The  Irish  have  a  genius  for  small  politics,  they  are 
clannish,  tribal  and  municipal,  but  seldom  combine  on  larger 
issues.  They  have  the  fighting  habit,  and  feel  compelled  to  fight 
among  themselves ;  this  belligerency  can  be  ascribed  to  the  inces- 
sant warfare  of  their  ancestry,  first  with  wild  beasts  and  nature 
generally,  and  next  with  enemies  who  drove  the  original  settlers 
toward  the  sea,  and  finally  the  Celt,  himself  severely  hunted, 
drove  these  before  him  and  mated  with  their  survivors.  So  that 
the  fighting,  irritable,  alert,  quick,  reckless  national  traits  can 
thus  be  explained  as  habit  which  became  transmitted  through 
thousands  of  years.  The  sixteenth  century  brought  religious 
differences,  under  Cromwell  and  William  of  Orange  protestants 
were  oppressive  to  the  catholics,  English  trade  tried  to  grab 
Irish  patronage  and  subjugate  their  industries,  they  hindered 
development  by  atrocious  legislation,  and  reduced  the  peasantry 
to  serfs.  At  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  century,  says  Larned,® 
Ireland  was  still  weakly  fighting  her  oppressors,  without  judg- 
ment or  enduring  resolution ;  finally  the  conscience  of  the  English 
was  aroused  and  the  Irish  were  allowed  some  rights,  of  which 
they  do  not  make  the  best  use,  occasionally  as  members  of  parlia- 
ment seeking  revenge  rather  than  sensible  legislation  for  all. 
Rancor  is  often  foolishly  exhibited  by  both  sides. 

There  are  many  descendants  of  English  Jacobites,  those  who 
wanted  King  James'  family  succession,  and  who  favored  the 
Stuart  pretenders,  and  other  fugitives,  living  in  the  mountains 
of  North  Carolina  and  Virginia.  They  preserve  the  dialect  of 
James'  time.  The  Canadian  French  patois  is  an  ancient  French 
tongue.  The  South  American  states  are  crude,  semi-barbarous, 
non-cohesive  affairs,  such  as  abounded  in  the  middle  ages,  with 
the  language  spoken  in  Spain  400  years  ago.  California  in  1847 
had  a  population  of  6,000  Mexicans  and  200,000  Indians,  both  of 

*  Topical  History. 


38  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

whom  are  supplanted  by  the  Europeans  who  call  themselves 
Americans,  and  this  European  invasion  has  gradually  filled  all 
other  parts  of  the  United  States,  obliterating  the  savages  and 
tending  to  the  formation  of  a  homogeneous  people  from  widely 
separated  Aryan  and  Semitic  branches,  brought  together  in 
America,  the  liberties  they  enjoy  enabling  superior  development, 
which  is  beginning  to  have  its  effect  upon  the  old  world  in  many 
ways  to  arrest  the  fossilizing  tendency  of  its  thoughts  and 
methods. 

The  Creoles  of  Louisiana  are  mixed  Spanish  and  French,  and 
in  the  north  the  English  predominate,  mixed  with  Celtic  and 
Germanic  people,  the  original  settlers  from  the  "round  heads" 
and  "cavaliers"  being  overwhelmed,  which  at  one  time  placed 
witch-burning  Puritans  in  New  England  and  insolent,  brawling 
"royalists"  in  Virginia  and  southward.  A  Scotch-Irish  stream 
set  in  to  America  in  the  early  part  of  the  eighteenth  century,  and 
continued  at  the  rate  of  sometimes  twelve  thousand  a  year  from 
1729  to  1755.  They  settled  mainly  in  East  Pennsylvania,  Mary- 
land, Virginia,  the  Carolinas,  Georgia,  Kentucky  and  the  Missis- 
sippi valley.  This  stock  furnished  the  Union  with  many  of  its 
most  notable  characters,  among  whom  were  Jefferson,  Madison, 
Calhoun,  Benton,  Henry,  Poe,  Justice  Marshall,  Doctors  Mc- 
Dowell and  Sims,  Generals  Lee  and  Jackson,  Sailor  Paul  Jones, 
Presidents  Monroe,  Taylor,  Polk  and  Johnson. 

Mr.  James  M.  Barnard,  of  Boston,  told  me  that  when  my 
father,  the  American  sculptor,  brought  to  Italy  the  clay  models  of 
his  busts  of  Daniel  Webster,  Henry  Clay,  Chief  Justice  Shaw  and 
others,  to  be  finished  in  marble,  the  Italian  marble  workers  ex- 
claimed :  "You  have  brought  back  the  heads  of  the  old  Romans !" 
Mr.  Barnard  suggests  that  it  is  not  unlikely  that  the  Roman 
generals  and  soldiery,  so  long  encamped  in  the  British  isles,  left 
their  impress  upon  the  people,  apparently  strongly  among  the 
Scotch-Irish,  from  whom  so  many  famous  Americans  descended. 

Long  after  the  Celtic  branch  of  the  Aryans  had  skirted  the 
Black  and  Mediterranean  seas  and  passed  northward,  the  swarms 
from  whom  the  Greeks  and  Romans  originated  moved  over  the 
Bosphorus  and  Dardanelles.  In  the  seventh  century  before 
Christ,  Macedonia  was  occupied  by  a  few  scattered  inland  towns 


THE    ARYANS.  39 

of  rude  tribes,  but  they  were  brave  and  pugnacious ;  the  Persian 
yoke  of  the  fifth  century  B.  C.  was  thrown  off,  and  in  the  fourth 
century  Alexander  Overran  Persia.  Greece  afforded  a  favorable 
place  for  the  development  of  civilization  through  early  relations 
with  Phoenicia  and  Egypt.  Kingship  was  at  first  patriarchal, 
but  usually  gave  way  to  a  few  powerful  schemers,  oligarchies, 
which  in  time  were  overthrown  by  adventurers  leading  the  peo- 
ple, and  these  '^tyrants"  soon  fell  in  their  turn.  In  Athens  there 
arose  the  purest  democracy  the  world  has  ever  seen,  but  harsh- 
ness and  arrogance  induced  by  prosperity  caused  the  downfall  of 
Athens.  Statesmen  who  had  the  welfare  of  the  people  at  heart 
and  were  capable  and  honest  were  treated  with  contempt  by  the 
ignorant,  rapacious  rabble,  who  were  easily  led  by  demagogues. 
With  the  change  of  Roman  imperialism  to  its  disguise,  Greece 
reigned  in  the  name  of  Rome  and  fought  a  thousand  years  with 
barbarians.  With  Constantinople  as  its  capital,  the  Byzantine 
empire  inherited  the  conjoint  strength  and  glories  of  Rome, 
Greece  and  Macedonia,  and  was  the  bulwark  of  Europe  against 
the  oriental  danger.  Hallam  says  its  history  was  one  of  crimes 
and  revolutions.  In  the  tenth  century  it  was  vicious,  cowardly, 
wealthy  and  enlightened ;  of  the  seventy-six  emperors  and  five 
empresses  fifteen  were  put  to  death,  seven  were  blinded  or  other- 
wise mutilated,  four  were  deposed  and  imprisoned  in  monasteries 
and  ten  were  compelled  to  abdicate.  Half  of  the  whole  number 
were  treated  with  violence. 

The  turmoil  of  the  early  Greeks  or  Hellenes  appears  in  the 
hordes  of  Thessaly,  pouring  down  upon  the  Dorians  and  driving 
them  out,  whereupon  they  drove  others  out  in  turn.  Tribes  from 
the  lowlands  expelled  the  Thebans,  and  the  Dorians  are  supposed 
to  have  killed  off  a  superior  race.  The  Achaian  civilization  is 
placed  between  B.  C.  1700  to  1400  in  the  southern  peninsula,  or 
Peloponnessus. 

Boetia  became  the  name  of  a  mixed  lot  of  races,  and  leagues 
between  the  cities  were  made  with  Thebes  at  the  head. 

The  lonians  were  also  driven  while  driving  others.  They 
were  superior  intellectually,  with  Athens  as  their  chief  city.  The 
ascendancy  of  Pericles  made  the  golden  age  of  Athens,  but  in  a 


40  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

war  of  twenty-seven  years  Athens  was  overthrown  by  the  Pelo- 
ponnesian  league. 

Monarchies,  aristocracies,  democracies  existed  side  by  side, 
and  were  often  leagued  together,  at  peace  awhile,  and  then  at  war 
with  each  other.  There  were  tyrannies  alongside  of  representa- 
tive governments.  Solon,  B.  C.  594,  founded  the  Athenian 
democracy.  The  first  real  union  of  Greece  came  in  B.  C.  491, 
through  the  threats  of  Persia. 

Sparta,  the  oligarchy,  excited  jealousy,  and  so  did  Athens,  the 
democracy.  The  Greeks  fought  each  other,  class  against  class. 
Droughts,  plagues,  earthquakes,  famines  occurred,  and  the  Per- 
sians fomented  strife  by  corrupting  the  Greeks  with  money,  as 
later  still  did  the  Romans  in  their  conquests  during  the  second 
and  third  centuries  B.  C. 

The  Aryan  emigrants  were  confirmed  travelers,  and  carried 
with  them  many  ancient  customs,  which  in  the  course  of  time 
were  intensified  by  being  made  sacred  rites.  The  regular  spring- 
time leaving  of  the  young  people  selected  for  banishment  became 
a  religious  duty  with  the  Romans,  and  was  known  as  the  Ver 
Sacrum.  With  the  increase  of  population  and  scarcity  of  food 
the  Aryan  emigration  became  a  means  of  depleting  the  nation. 
Another  custom  was  to  get  rid  of  the  aged  who  encumbered  the 
march  by  throwing  them  to  the  fishes.  With  Slavs  and  Teutons 
far  into  historical  times,  the  aged  were  put  to  death.^  The  Roman 
Pontifices  were  bridge  builders  and  priests  because  they  bound  the 
river  gods  in  fetters,  hence  pontifical,  a  term  preserved  to  this 
day  for  the  pontiff,  or  high  priest.  Another  significant  survival 
occurs  in  the  archbishop's  hat,  which  resembles  the  head  of  a  fish, 
the  mitre,  having  come  down  from  the  headgear  of  the  priests 
of  Dagon,  the  fish  god.  The  ancient  pontifical  office  included 
throwing  the  aged  into  the  river  as  a  sacrifice,  thus  propitiating 
the  river  gods  and  getting  rid  of  the  old  and  infirm  at  the  same 
time.  Later  the  Romans  realized  the  value  of  experience  and 
insight  which  age  acquired,  and  they  ensured  the  services  of  old 
men  for  the  commonwealth  by  a  special  institution,  senatus,  but 
reminiscences  of  the  former  custom  were  preserved  in  the  sacri- 

®  Grimm,  Deutsche  Rechtsaltertumer,  p.  486. 


THE    ARYANS.  4I 

fice  of  the  Argei,  and  in  the  expression  senes  depontani.  To 
these  we  owe  the  knowledge  that  when  crossing  a  stream  during 
the  march  the  old  people  were  thrown  over  the  bridge. ^^  The 
stone  age  existed  at  the  time  of  the  marching  Romans,  for  their 
earliest  bridges  were  held  together  by  wooden  nails  at  a  time  when 
the  Jews  and  Persians  used  copper  for  nails,  before  their  iron  age 
began. 

The  various  warfares  leading  to  an  intermingling  of  tribes 
reads,  especially  in  Mediterranean  history,  like  descriptions  of 
wave  after  wave  of  grasses,  herbs  an^  bushes  growing  into  and 
around  each  others'  location,  exterminating,  supplanting,  cross- 
ing, commingling,  slowly  or  rapidly,  with  a  finally  reached  com- 
promise and  modus  vivendi,  which  may  be  but  a  new  starting 
point  for  the  incessant  battle  of  life,  alike  for  plants,  animals  and 
man.  The  early  Italians  were  invaders  who  were  constantly 
repelling  invaders.  As  Italy  first  appeared  in  history  it  contained 
a  number  of  races  mainly  Aryans,  with  Etruscan  Semites  on  the 
west  shore  of  the  Tiber,  while  in  the  north  were  the  Aryan 
Gauls  in  the  valley  of  the  Po,  with  pre-Aryan  Ligurians  and 
Aryan  Venetians  on  the  west  and  east  coasts.  All  received  the 
Latin  stamp  with  the  growing  power  of  Rome.  The  Latin  and 
Sabine  tribes  on  the  Tiber  founded  Rome  in  B.  C.  776.  Kindred 
tribes  settled  around  them,  but  the  first  families  jealously  held 
themselves  above  them,  and  permitted  them  to  have  only  a  pseudo- 
citizenship,  with  more  burdens  than  privileges.  These  plebeians 
got  tired  of  fighting  the  battles  and  being  cuffed  about  by  the 
politicians  who  monopolized  all  the  offices  and  the  conquered 
lands,  so  a  class  struggle  occurred  which  shaped  the  domestic 
politics  of  Rome  for  two  centuries,  B.  C.  500.  Dionysius,  Plu- 
tarch, Livy  and  others  credit  traditions  of  long  wars  with  the 
Sabines  after  the  expulsion  of  the  Tarquins,  but  Macauley  says 
that  modern  skeptical  criticism  concludes  the  entire  matter  to  be 
fictitious.  An  oligarchy  cast  out  kings  who  were  the  early  chiefs, 
and  put  two  yearly  chosen  consuls  in  their  places,  thus  founding 
the  great  Roman  republic  with  an  aristocratic  constitution;  the 
plebs  fought  for  the  democratic  government,  and  tribunes  were 

"Rudolph  von  Ihering,  The  Evolution  of  the  Aryans,  Ch.  III..  Bk.  IV. 


42  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

elected  to  represent  the  people  and  secure  some  equality  with 
patricians,  who  were  the  successful  grabbers  of  power.  Livy 
called  the  patricians  nobilis,  those  who  are  known ;  the  people 
were  ignobilis,  persons  unknown ;  hence  the  origin  of  noble  and 
ignoble,  but  they  united  in  warring  until  the  whole  Italian  penin- 
sula was  under  Roman  rule,  and  then  they  intruded  into  Sicily 
and  Carthage,  and  even  to  Asia  Minor  down  to  the  second  cen- 
tury before  Christ,  but  corruption  set  in  by  spoils  of  conquest  and 
streams  of  tribute  money  from  three  continents.  Leprous  with 
slavery,  the  middle  class  disappeared,  freeman  were  supplanted 
by  slaves,  small  farms  were  superseded  by  large  slave-worked 
estates,  tricks  of  law  placed  lands  with  the  few,  the  common 
people  degenerated  into  mobs,  and  a  new  aristocracy  arose  to 
control  the  government,'  demagogues  swayed  the  rabble,  and  even 
patriots  had  to  play  the  hypocrite.  In  the  first  century  before 
Christ  came  reform  tmdertakings  foiled,  social  and  civil  wars, 
and  Caesar  founded  an  imperial  autocracy  with  all  the  diseases 
which  had  destroyed  the  republic,  but  from  thence  to  the  fifth 
century  A.  D.  organization  worked  in  spite  of  emperors  who 
were  fools,  fiends,  or  insane,  while  Rome  was  a  sink  of  vices  and 
misery,  with  oppression  throughout  the  empire.  The  last  gener- 
ation of  Republican  Rome  witnessed  the  sinister  strifes  and 
intrigues,  the  machinations  and  corruptions  of  a  stupendous  and 
wicked  game  in  politics  that  was  played  against  one  another  and 
against  the  republic  by  a  few  daring,  unscrupulous  players,  with 
the  empire  of  the  civilized  world  for  the  stake  between  them. 
Three  main  players  were  Pompeius,  Crassus  and  Julius  Csesar. 

Cicero  and  Cato  bore  a  less  selfish  part  in  the  contest.  They 
could  not  realize  that  the  former  times  had  passed  and  that  worse 
was  to  come.  Christianity  spread  over  it  and  gave  some  promise 
of  regenerating  the  empire,  but  the  oppressors,  finding  that  they 
could  not  crush  the  movement,  placed  themselves  at  its  head,  and 
the  same  old  oligarchy,  the  same  old  greed  of  power,  the  same 
demagogism,  hypocrisy,  corruption  and  indifi^erence  to  the  real 
welfare  of  the  people,  while  pretending  great  solicitude  for  the 
souls  of  all,  still  governs  as  the  empire  was  governed  in  its  worst 
days,  and,  as  Larned  says :  "When  the  ecclesiasticism  of  a 
politically   fashioned   church   was   grafted   upon   Christianity,   it 


THE    ARYANS.  43 

then  bore  the  evil  seeds  of  new  corruption,  new  discord,  new 
maladies  for  the  Roman  world."  The  popes  were  practically 
emperors,  who,  like  those  in  early  Babylonian  history,  united  the 
functions  of  both  priest  and  king  in  the  patesis.  The  old  pagan 
emperors  never  lost  a  chance  to  make  gods  of  themselves. 

It  was  not  enough  for  tribes  of  different  religions  to  destroy 
one  another,  but  factions  would  arise  among  those  of  one  kind 
of  belief,  and  from  the  second  to  the  sixth  century  the  question 
whether  we  should  worship  one  god  or  three  deluged  the  country 
with  blood.  The  Arians  were  a  Christian  sect  who  raised  this 
doubt.  In  Russia  today  the  peasants  kill  one  another  over  similar 
silly  issues. 

On  the  south  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  was  the  powerful 
Carthaginian  people,  who  were  rivals  with  the  Romans  for  pos- 
session of  the  world.  They  were  Phoenicians,  and  engaged  with 
the  Romans  in  the  Punic  wars,  from  which  came  the  word  punish, 
at  intervals  during  the  third  and  second  centuries  before  Christ, 
in  one  of  which  Scipio  "brought  the  war  into  Africa,"  after  Han- 
nibal had  crossed  the  sea  and  had  been  at  the  gates  of  Rome,  but 
finally  Carthage  was  destroyed  by  Rome,  and  its  menace  to  the 
world  ended.  Europe  would  have  been  Semitized  had  Carthage 
prevailed.  The  existence  of  such  things  as  mercenary  armies 
in  those  times,  ready  to  fight  upon  any  side  for  booty,  shows  how 
the  hope  of  gain  may  prompt  wholesale  treason  at  favorable 
periods,  and  the  relentless  extermination  of  the  European  mer- 
cenary allies  of  the  Carthaginians  by  the  very  people  for  whom 
they  fought  when  these  mercenaries  became  too  importunate  for 
their  pay,  reminds  us  of  the  old  saying  that  "the  devil  may  pay 
in  bad  coin,"  and  that  mankind  does  not  always  have  to  believe 
in  the  justness  of  a  cause  to  be  able  to  fight  for  it;  in  fact,  the 
infection  of  imitation  and  love  of  gain  and  excitement  figure 
greatly  in  all  wars  at  all  times. 

A  glance  down  the  chronology  of  such  old  times  suffices  to 
show  the  ferocity  of  such  periods,  and  in  spite  of  it  and  of  the 
numbers  of  rulers  slain,  how  administrative  systems  went  on  with 
little  disturbance  or  change,  and  how  mankind  lost  the  ability  to 
ever  think  of  any  different  political  state;  government  persisted 
in  spite  of  individual  sovereigns  destroyed,  for  during  the  first 


44  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

three  centuries  of  the  Christian  era  violent  deaths,  mainly  in  civil 
strife,  removed  Caesar,  Cicero,  Caligula,  Claudius,  Nero,  Domi- 
tian,  Commodus,  Pertinax,  Geta,  Caracella,  Elagabalus,  Severus, 
Gallus,  Aurelius,  Gallienus,  Aurelian,  Probus,  Numerian. 

The  Roman  empire  occupied  both  sides  of  the  Mediterranean 
sea  and  Asia  Minor,  Jerusalem  being  captured  B.  C.  63,  Julius 
Caesar  having  invaded  Gaul  eight  years  before  this.  By  A.  D. 
300  Constantine  concluded  to  recognize  Christianity  as  the  state 
religion,  as  it  had  become  strong  enough  to  maintain  itself 
whether  he  fought  it  or  not;  so,  like  the  coach  dog  which 
finds  out  which  way  the  horses  go,  he  ran  ahead  of  the  procession 
and  appeared  to  lead  it;  some  historical  commentators  declare 
that  Constantine  was  a  pagan  all  his  life,  and  never  gave  more 
than  tacit  support  to  Christianity  till  near  the  close  of  his  days, 
nor  did  the  adoption  of  the  religion  of  forgiveness  and  mercy 
make  the  Romans  a  particle  less  brutal,  for  we  hear  of  Roman 
Christian  spectators  of  arena  combats  between  pagan  captives, 
the  old  brutality  persisting  through  change  of  state  religion. 
Britain  was  conquered,  but  Persia  stopped  the  progress  of  Roman 
arms  eastward. 

The  Aryan  settlers  and  unsettlers  from  the  north  mix  up  with 
Roman  affairs  about  this  time  and  later,  so  they  must  now  be 
regarded.  The  Germanic  or  Teutonic  people  include  many 
divisions,  most  prominent  of  which  were  the  Scandinavians  com- 
prising the  Danes,  Norwegians  and  Swedes ;  the  other  Germanic 
people  are  the  English,  Germans  and  Hollandish.  Many  tradi- 
tions point  to  Sweden  as  the  region  earliest  occupied  by  Aryans, 
and  Penka  thinks  this  primitive  people  originated  there.  The 
mountains  of  Norway  show  the  traces  of  stone-age  men  preced- 
ing the  Aryans  at  a  time  when  the  contiguous  Sweden  was  still 
beneath  the  sea.  The  Goths  were  the  Teutons  of  the  low  German 
family,  and  with  the  Alemanni  were  first  heard  of  at  Rome,  in  the 
third  century  after  Christ,  as  overrunning  the  country  and  sea 
eastward,  their  piratical  expeditions  were  extended  into  Asia,  as 
well  as  along  the  coast  of  Gaul.  Gibbon  thinks  that  the  Goths 
and  Vandals  were  originally  one  great  people.  The  Franks  were 
a  powerful  combination  of  German  tribes  on  the  Rhine,  warring 
with  Gaul  and  Britain ;   they  were  defeated  by  Constantine  A.  D. 


THE    ARYANS. 


45 


306,  who  compelled  several  thousand  captive  Franks,  including 
their  kings  Regasius  and  Ascaricus,  to  fight  with  wild  beasts  in 
the  circus  of  Treves,  to  the  inexpressible  delight  of  the  Christian 
spectators. ^^  Burgundy  was  formed  about  the  middle  of  the 
fourth  century,  on  either  side  of  the  Elbe,  by  a  numerous  Vandal 
people,  swelling  into  a  powerful  kingdom;  in  A.  D.  500  it  was 
divided  into  two  parts  by  kings  who  were  brothers,  one  of  whom 
conspired  with  Clovis,  the  Frank  king,  to  overthrow  the  elder  at 
Dijon,  who  finally  captured  his  treacherous  brother  and  put  him 
to  death/-  Burgundy  was  finally  captured  by  the  Franks  in 
A.  D.  533,  and  in  1032  Germany  absorbed  the  main  country. 

The  decline  of  Rome  was  attended  by  Visigothic  invasions, 
those  of  Attila  the  Hun,  a  Turanian,  and  the  fall  of  the  western 
Roman  empire  during  the  fifth  and  sixth  centuries.  The  Ger- 
mans were  merged  and  finally  lost  in  the  greater  mass  of  the 
conquered,  as  the  Normans  were  lost  among  the  Saxons.  In 
Lombardy  the  Germans  made  more  impression.  Justinian  recov- 
ered Italy,  and  now  a  new  terror  arose  from  Asia  in  the  rapidly 
growing  Arabian  empire,  extending  over  Persia  and  Asia  Minor 
and  finally  along  the  south  coast  of  the  Mediterranean  sea.  Its 
origin  was  through  Mohammed,  the  fanatic  who,  when  forty 
years  old,  claimed  to  be  the  apostle  of  God  to  root  out  idolatry. 
He  stole  much  of  his  theology  from  Christian  teaching.  When 
fifty  he  began  hostilities,  probably  through  his  epilepsy  making 
him  reckless.  He  had  convulsions,  and  told  of  his  heavenly 
visions  that  came  to  him  in  his  fits,  revelations,  as  shown  by  the 
Koran,  mainly  to  enable  him  to  take  another  wife,  a  scheme  that 
was  successfully  copied  by  Brigham  Young,  the  Mormon  prophet 
twelve  hundred  years  later.  This  Arabian  empire  became  the 
Mohammedan,  and  later  the  Ottoman  empire,  but  it  was  un- 
changed in  its  determination  to  overrun  the  world,  its  first  repulse 
was  at  Constantinople  in  the  seventh  century,  but  it  subjugated 
the  Turks  and  Spain  soon  afterward,  and  while  the  Mohammedan 
armies  were  triumphantly  marching  northward  from  Spain  they 
were  met  by  Charles  Martel,  the  memorable,  who  defeated  them 
in  a  great  battle  between  Poitiers  and  Tours  in  732.     This  battle 

"  W.  C.  Perry,  The  Franks,  Ch.  IV. 

"  F.  Hodgkin,  Italy  and  Her  Invaders.  Bk.  IV.,  Ch.  9. 


46  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

delivered  Europe  from  the  dread  of  Musselmans  invasions  there- 
after. Among  buffer  regions  against  Moslem  invasion  today 
are  the  Balkan  states  and  Danube  river,  where  Greek,  Bulgarian 
and  Turkish  villages  exist  side  by  side. 

Constantinople  was  finally  captured  from  the  Christians  by 
the  Turks  in  A.  D.  1453.  In  1836  Mohammed  II  tried  to  give 
an  European  reformation  to  his  state,  but  the  Jannisaries,  or 
royal  guards,  turned  against  him.  Six  thousand  of  them  were 
killed  by  the  sultan's  adherents,  and  fifteen  thousand  were  exiled. 
The  Jannisaries  had  previously  contributed  to  Turkish  success, 
but  became  a  source  of  danger  to  the  government,  as  did  the 
crusading  knights  templar  on  their  return  to  Europe,  the  govern- 
ment being  compelled  to  disband  them  in  self-defense,  from 
which  is  learned  that  organizations  may  eventually  outlive  their 
usefulness  and  subvert  the  very  principles  they  were  created  to 
maintain,  and  that  reforms  are  often  opposed  most  by  the  people 
who  would  be  most  benefited  by  them. 

From  Norway  and  the  Baltic  isles  came  the  Norse  pirates, 
who  called  themselves  sons  of  Odin,  and  treated  the  Christian 
Teutons  with  contempt.  In  the  ninth  century  they  overran 
France  and  sacked  its  cities,  but  were  driven  back  by  the  Moham- 
medans of  the  Spanish  peninsula.  The  Norse  carried  off  thou- 
sands of  captives,  mainly  women,  from  all  the  countries  they 
invaded,  suggesting  that  light-haired  boys  and  black-haired  girls 
in  Germanic  families  are  reversions  to  the  Norse  male  blondes 
and  Mediterranean  female  brunettes  of  these  rough  old  periods. 
Between  the  years  986  and  loii  it  was  thought  that  the  Norse 
Vikings  made  voyages  to  America.  The  Norse  empire  finally 
"broke  up  during  the  tenth  to  the  thirteenth  centuries,  but  in  the 
eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries  they  overran  South  Italy  and 
Sicily,  sacked  and  burned  Rome,  ravaged  Greece  and  attempted 
the  conquest  of  the  Byzantine  empire. 

Austrian  history  is  mainly  that  of  a  family,  the  epileptic  and 
unsavory  Hapsburgs,  who  traveled  further  down  the  road  of 
degeneracy  by  crossing  with  stock  that  resulted  in  imbeciles  such 
as  Charles  II  of  Spain.  Some  of  the  things  Austria  can  glory 
in  consist  in  base  ingratitude  to  John  of  Poland,  by  refusing  him 
help  after  he  had  rescued  Vienna  from  the  Turks,  fomenting,  with 


THE    ARYANS.  47 

the  Spanish  church,  the  frightful  thirty  years'  Bohemian  war,  and 
assisting  France  to  steal'  the  liberties  of  Mexico.  The  mixture  of 
races  in  Austria  is  the  most  remarkable  in  Europe. 

France  descended  from  ancient  Gaul  mainly  of  Celtic  origin. 
Its  people  passed  through  the  stone  age,  fished  and  hunted  as 
savages,  occupied  caves  and  rude  huts,  and  to  the  fact  that  they 
and. their  descendants  have  been  more  wretched  than  other  inhab- 
itants of  Europe  may  be  referred  many  national  characteristics. 
The  people  for  ages  were  hounded,  robbed  and  starved,  not  only 
by  foreign  foes  but  by  domestic  priests  and  nobles,  until  the 
result  could  be  but  defective,  nervous,  mercurial,  obsolescing, 
happy-go-lucky  and  hysterical  generations.  Their  existence  was 
precarious,  as  one  day  there  would  be  enough  to  eat  and  later  the 
tribes  would  be  suffering  for  want  of  food.  The  pastoral  state 
was  the  next  to  follow,  when  flocks  were  owned  in  common,  but 
there  was  occasional  famine  even  then.  The  prevailing  idea  in 
owning  soil  in  common  referred  to  one  tribe  of  Celtic  Gauls  agree- 
ing to  occupy  land  on  one  side  of  a  stream  and  another  tribe 
confine  itself  to  another  side.  Some  of  the  present  day  schemes 
relate  to  a  return  to  such  primitive  methods  as  having  land  and 
goods  in  common ;  those  who  favor  such  notions  seem  unaware 
that  all  the  other  conditions  of  savagery  must  accompany  such 
retrograde  movements.  Inevitably  the  rascal  would  appear  who, 
under  force  or  pretext,  would  own  all  the  land,  and  the  people 
also. 

Succeeding  this  came  the  agricultural  period,  when  sometimes 
crops  were  raised  for  tribes  and  sometimes  for  families.  Slaves 
and  women  did  all  the  work.  The  slaves  were  captives,  unhappy, 
miserable,  but  the  villagers  were  equally  miserable,  through  the 
powerful  gradually  claiming  ownership  of  all  the  land.  The  rich 
made  the  laws  for  the  common  people  to  obey  and  carry  out,  and 
the  Druid  priests  constituted  the  court  of  final  appeal.  These 
French  ancestry  were  composed  of  Celtic  Gauls  mixed  with  Ger- 
mans and  Romans. 

The  colonists  and  slaves  guarded  the  fields  after  Rome  had 
Latinized  the  Gauls,  and  the  corvees  fell  upon  the  few,  that  is, 
these  peasants  who  were  forced  to  work  for  the  nobles  had  also 
to  provide  for  themselves,  and  all  this  was  in  the  name  of  the 


48  the;  evolution  of  man  and"  his  mind. 

public  interest.  There  were  constant  wars,  and  in  1030  to  1032 
were  three  years  of  incessant  rain,  so  that  seed  rotted  in  the 
ground  and  a  most  atrocious  famine  followed.  Feudalism 
decayed  under  the  communes  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centu- 
ries, and  intriguery  gathered  the  dukedoms  into  the  royal  con- 
trol and  modern  France  was  unified  but  was  far  from  happy. 
In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries  royalty  used  and 
abused  the  communes,  breaking  their  charters,  taking  away  their 
liberties,  their  courage  and  hopes,  and  widening  class  differences. 
While  in  England  parliament  grew  in  power,  there  were  only 
thirteen  meetings  of  the  French  assembly,  the  states  general,  in 
five  hundred  years. 

The  royal  court  became  a  centre  of  corruption,  full  of  syco- 
phants, jesters,  and  knaves,  ruled  by  bigotry  and  frivolity.  Free- 
dom of  conscience  or  of  anything  was  destroyed  by  civil  war, 
oppression,  banishment,  bribery  and  massacre.  One  memorable 
slaughter  of  Huguenots  was  instigated  by  Catherine  de  Medici 
on  what  is  called  St.  Bartholomew's  night,  1572,  to  commemorate 
which  the  pope  had  a  medal  struck  off,  which  later  ecclesiasts  are 
ashamed  of  and  try  to  deny  and  suppress.  Frangois  I  invented 
the  court  with  its  degradation  of  savants  into  clowns,  its  fetes, 
with  courtier  politicians,  its  immorality  and  dissipation.  La- 
comb^^  tells  of  thirty  thousand  peasants  in  1662  on  the  border  of 
famine,  without  beds,  clothing,  furniture,  reduced  to  skeletons, 
many  women  and  infants  being  found  dead  on  the  road,  with 
grass  in  their  mouths,  and  villagers  had  not  strength  enough  left 
to  dig  graves.  A  letter  of  1683  from  Abbe  Grandet  to  the  arch- 
bishop of  Angers,  mentions  bread  made  of  ferns  and  that  many 
went  three  or  four  days  without  eating.  The  prisons  were  full 
and  there  was  no  justice,  men  treated  those  beneath  them  with 
ferocity.  Fenelon  wrote  to  the  king:  "Your  people  are  fam- 
ished, farming  is  abandoned,  the  villages  and  country  are  depop- 
ulated, France  is  a  desolate  hospital  without  provisions."  And 
during  all  this  time  Louis  XIV  reveled  in  gluttonous,  lecherous 
and  drunken  splendor,  the  vulgar  ideal  of  a  king. 

In  1698,  of  7CX),ooo  in  Normandy,  only  50,000  had  bread,  and 
most  of  Alengon  were  ferocious  with  suffering.    La  Rochelle  lost 

"  Petite  histoire  du  people  francais. 


THE    ARYANS.  49 

most  of  its  inhabitants  from  inanition.  In  Moulins  the  people 
were  living  like  beasts.  Most  of  Riom  lived  on  vv^alnuts,  as  the 
taxes  deprived  them  of  all  else.  In  1740  the  Archbishop  Mas- 
silon  wrote  to  Minister  Fleury :  *'Our  people  are  frightfully 
miserable,  eating  pearl  barley  bread  which  they  are  compelled  to 
take  from  the  mouths  of  their  children  to  pay  their  taxes.  In 
1745  the  Due  d'Orleans  showed  to  Louis  XV  a  loaf  of  bread 
made  of  ferns,  and  remarked :  "Sire,  see  the  food  of  your 
subjects." 

June  14,  1789,  the  bastile  was  torn  down  by  the  infuriated 
populace,  the  royal  prison  in  which  so  many  legal  murders  had 
taken  place,  with  the  merest  pretense  of  a  trial,  often  with  none. 
Rousseau  and  Montesquieu  influenced  a  development  of  intelli- 
gence until  the  middle  class  proclaimed  an  assembly  to  give  a 
constitution  to  France.  Dupont  boldly  announced  that  the  inten- 
tion was  to  give  a  constitution  based  on  a  declaration  of  rights 
for  all  men,  all  times,  and  all  countries.  Lebon^*  summarizes  the 
declaration  of  August  27,  1789,  to  the  effect  that:  "Men  at  birth 
are  free  and  entitled  to  the  same  rights  of  liberty,  property, 
security  and  resistance  to  oppression.  Sovereignty  is  vested  in 
the  whole  nation,  and  liberty  consists  in  whatever  does  not  injure 
others.  The  law  may  only  forbid  actions  which  are  harmful  to 
society,  and  is  limited  to  the  expression  of  the  general  will;  it 
must  be  equal,  for  all  and  every  citizen,  either  personally  or 
through  representatives,  is  entitled  to  assist  in  framing  the  laws." 
This  declaration  followed  that  of  American  independence,  and 
covers  much  the  same  ground,  suggesting  many  similar  princi- 
ples. The  chief  difficulty  of  present  times  is  to  arrange  means 
to  prevent  the  foxes  and  wolves  of  politics  and  superstition  from 
undermining  the  effectiveness  of  such  declarations  by  finding 
ways  to  defeat  the  wishes  of  the  people  and  make  and  administer 
the  laws  in  their  own  interests,  thus  repeating  the  old  game  of 
grab  in  new  ways  in  spite  of  some  growth  of  intelligence. 

This  declaration  of  the  French  people  means  that  one  set  of 
men  had  set  themselves  up  over  all  others ;  that  these  few  arro- 
gated to  themselves  the  right  to  enslave,  rob,  oppress  and  destroy 
whom  they  wished,  and  these  few  made  laws  against  the  people 

"  Modern  History  of  France. 


50  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

who  had  no  voice  in  affairs.  Old  human  nature  inherited  from 
animal  nature  stands  ready  to  take  advantage  of  the  least  chance 
to  profit  by  flaws  in  laws,  and  of  the  impossibility  of  constructing- 
means  of  protecting  the  rights  of  the  people  that  rascals  cannot 
find  some  way  of  subverting.  Making  a  great  parade  and  pre- 
tence of  adhering  to  the  letter  of  principles  whose  spirit  they 
sneakingly  avoid,  when  they  can  make  anything  by  so  doing. 

Spain  and  Portugal,  the  locations  of  the  Inquisitions  of  the 
middle  ages,  the  Holy  Office,  need  not  be  mentioned.  Everyone 
has  heard  of  how  in  the  name  of  the  merciful,  meek  and  lowly 
Jesus,  multitudes  have  been  tortured  to  death  in  such  countries 
to  establish  priestcraft  more  firmly  in  the  world,  destroying  both 
sexes  of  those  who  dared  to  think,  who  had  brains  developed, 
leaving  only  the  trucklers,  the  double  faced  and  bigoted,  and  the 
thoughtless  and  insincere  to  inherit  and  transmit,  with  inevitable 
decadence  and  extinction.  The  descendants  of  the  Latins,  the 
Portuguese,  settled  in  Brazil,  and  the  Spaniards  in  other  parts  of 
South  America  and  the  West  Indies,  growing  hostile  to  their 
mother  countries  through  the  need  of  resisting  oppression,  finally 
separating  from  them  though  unable  to  establish  permanent  gov- 
ernments, as  they  are  not  far  enough  developed  mentally  to  do  so, 
except  among  a  few.  These  are  instances  of  the  splitting  off  of 
tribes  from  parent  stock,  and  final  reorganization  into  new  na- 
tions, hostility  existing  between  parent  and  child.  The  tendency 
now  appears  to  be  for  the  older  country  to  start  its  colonies  out 
on  a  self-supporting  basis  and  to  refrain  from  robbing  them  as 
the  Spaniards  always  did  their  colonies. 

The  great  Slavonian  nation  of  today  is  Russia,  though  its  first 
rulers  were  Swedes.  The  Poles  and  Bohemians  are  the  main 
western  Slavs,  but  the  Caucasus  contains  the  greatest  mixture  of 
early  Slavonian  races  with  many  other  main  families  and 
tongues.  The  Bulgarians  are  also  greatly  mixed  from  remnants 
of  Turanian  and  Aryan  peoples  who  successively  dwelt  in  that 
country.  The  Huns,  a  hideous  Mongol  i)eople,  ravaged  Europe 
but  were  eradicated  in  the  fifth  century,  and  the  Avars,  a  formid- 
able Turanian  branch  similar  to  the  Huns,  occupied  the  sixth 
century  with  rapine  and  outrage,  but  were  finally  destroyed  in 
the  seventh  century,  the  remnants  of  Huns  and  Avars  becoming 


THE    ARYANS.  ^I 

mixed  with  renegade  and  conquered  Slavs.  Turanian  consan- 
guine marriages  were  bad  enough,  and  sufficient  to  create  a  degen- 
erate line  of  descent,  but  when,  added  to  this,  children  in  all 
stages  of  immaturity,  as  in  India  of  the  present  time,  would  pro- 
create, what  kind  of  a  result  but  an  abominable  one,  could  be 
expected  ?  To  such  causes  can  be  ascribed  the  stupidity  notorious 
among  some  Hungarian  descendants  of  ancient  Magyars. 

In  832  the  Russian  empire  was  founded  by  Rurik,  a  Scandi- 
navian, Christianity  was  introduced  in  the  tenth  century,  and  in 
1569  was  the  first  encounter  with  the  Turks.  Then,  from  1697 
to  1704,  Peter  the  Great  was  active  in  initiating  civilization,  as 
Voltaire  says,^^  in  many  ways  except  humane  ones.  Brutal,  fero- 
cious, cruel,  he  prided  himself  on  his  dexterity  in  cutting  off 
heads.  Poland  originated  in  the  tenth  century,  and  became 
vassal  to  the  German  emperors.  Sobieski  rescued  Vienna  from 
the  Turks  in  1683,  and  was  basely  deserted  by  Vienna  when  in 
trouble  himself.  It  has  been  claimed  that  ingratitude  is  a  special 
Austrian  trait,  antedating  this  episode  and  coming  down  to  the 
present.  Poland  was  finally  divided,  Austria,  Germany  and 
Russia  at  difi:erent  times  snatching  away  parts,  until  poor  old 
Poland  is  no  more.  In  1366  to  1405  the  conquests  of  Timor  the 
Tartar,  or  Tamerlane,  in  the  orient,  were  extensive.  He  was  a 
descendant  of  Zenghis  Khan,  who,  with  only  20,000  men,  moving 
rapidly  from  place  to  place,  slaughtered  vast  provinces  and  piled 
up  cut-off  heads  in  pyramids  of  hundreds  of  thousands,  Cather- 
ine, the  empress,  1725  to  1739,  held  her  vulgar  orgies,  and 
Catherine  II,  1762  to  1796,  shamelessly  held  high  carnival,  such 
:as  the  famous  boodle  county  commissioners  of  Chicago  tried  to 
do  at  the  county  insane  asylum,  a  comparison  justified  by  such 
stock  being  closely  related  in  animal  disposition.  In  1801  came 
the  despotic  Paul,  suspicious,  tyrannical,  who  was  finally  assas- 
sinated, and  said  to  have  been  crazy,  though  not  so  much  so  as 
Ivan  the  Terrible,  who  merited  his  title.  In  1812  came  the  burn- 
ing of  Moscow  to  repel  the  French  army  under  Napoleon,  which 
straggled  back  disorganized,  insane,  starved,  cannibalistic,  a  mere 
remnant  of  the  original  invaders.  This  epileptic  criminal  degen- 
erate Napoleon  is  adored  by  a  lot  of  thoughtless  admirers  of 

"  History  of  Charles  XII  of  Sweden,  Bk.  I. 


52  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

swagger,  who  are  unable  to  read  history  aright.  In  1853  and 
1854  was  the  Crimean  war.  France  and  Russia  quarreled  as  a 
pretext  over  the  custody  of  the  holy  places  in  Jerusalem.  The 
real  issue  was  the  desire  of  Russia  to  grab  Turkey. 

In  an  article  by  Andrew  D.  White  on  Tolstoy^^,  he  mentions 
that  after  thirty-five  years  revisiting  Moscow  he  found  things  but 
little  changed,  the  same  unkempt  streets,  beggars,  sturdy  and 
dirty,  the  same  squalid  crowds,  crossing  themselves  before  the 
images  at  the  street  corners,  the  same  throngs  of  worshipers 
knocking  their  heads  against  the  pavements  of  churches.  The 
discussion  of  large  public  questions  is  not  allowed  in  Russia,  the 
press  gives  no  news,  and  even  correspondence  and  fireside  talks 
have  to  be  cautious.  Fanaticism  takes  many  shapes,  there  are 
many  ghastly  creeds,  doctrines  and  sects,  religious,  political  and 
philanthropic;  one  of  which  favors  the  murder  of  new-born 
children  in  order  to  save  their  souls,  another  enjoins  the  most 
horrible  bodily  mutilations  for  a  similar  purpose;  others,  still, 
would  plunge  the  world  in  flames  and  blood  for  the  difference  of 
a  phrase  in  a  creed  or  a  vowel  in  a  name,  or  a  finger  more  or  less 
in  making  the  sign  of  the  cross,  or  of  this  or  that  garment  in  a 
ritual,  or  that  gesture  in  a  ceremony. 

Nihilism  assumes  the  right  of  any  ignorant  individual  to  sit  in 
judgment  upon  the  whole  human  race  and  condemn  to  death  every 
other  human  being  who  may  differ  in  opinion  or  position  from 
him.  Politically  the  Russians  look  upon  the  czar  as  representing 
God,  and  all  the  world  outside  of  Russia  as  given  over  to  Satan 
because  it  rejects  the  czar.  These  nihilistic  and  other  theories  are 
the  outcome  of  original  minds  discouraged  by  the  sorrows  of  Rus- 
sian life,  developing  their  notions  logically,  but  never  subjecting 
them  to  discussion,  for  so  doing  would  destroy  their  value  as 
authority.  The  Russian  mind  attaches  no  such  value  to  reason- 
ing as  other  people  often  do.  Authority  is  the  only  way  of  re- 
ceiving information,  and  as  each  crowd  has  its  own  special  author- 
ity there  is  no  chance  for  discussion;  it  would  be  regarded  as 
insulting  to  propose  it.  Such  conditions  afford  us  an  idea  of  the 
causes  of  general  slowness  of  intellectual  movements  in  Europe 
in  the  middle  ages,  as  the  lack  of  mentality  at  present  in  Russia. 

^^  McClure's  Magazine,  April,  1901. 


THE    ARYANS. 


53 


reveals  what  was  a  common  stage  of  development  among  our 
ancestors. 

Where  for  any  cause  one  animal  succeeds  in  leading  the  herd 
or  pack,  whether  because  it  can  reason  best  or  is  the  strongest, 
the  other  animals  follow  and  fear  to  dispute  the  right  of  leader- 
ship. Many  such  animals  have  grown  so  accustomed  to  being 
commanded  by  leaders  who  thought  for  them  that  the  habit  of 
deference  to  authority,  instead  of  daring  to  reason  for  themselves, 
has  been  transmitted  far  down  the  line  of  descent  to  the  middle 
ages  of  Europe  and  to  the  present  time  in  large  parts  of  Russia, 
with  too  great  a  remnant  of  survivors  sprinkled  through  the  so- 
called  civilized  world. 


CHAPTER  III. 
THE    SEMITES. 

While  Arya  was  yet  benighted,  fully  ten  thousand  years  ago, 
there  was  a  Semitic  settlement  to  the  south,  and  a  people  called 
Sumerians, .  who  had  developed  considerable  culture.  Semites 
and  Sumerians  lived  side  by  side  and  borrowed  and  mixed  their 
civilizations,  and  3200  years  later  Sargon,  in  B.  C.  3800,  reigned 
in  Babylon,  where  the  culture  of  Chaldee  was  still  Sumerian,  but 
the  king  and  his  court  were  Semitic,  and  they  Semitized  the  older 
civilization.  The  Sumerian  continued  to  be  the  language  of  reli- 
gion and  law  down  to  the  days  of  Abraham,  as  the  Norman  lan- 
guage was  that  of  the  court  in  England  after  the  conquest,  while 
the  Saxon  was  the  speech  of  every  day  life. 

Sumerians  and  Accadians  divided  ancient  Babylonia  between 
them.  The  Accads  invented  the  picture  writing  which  after- 
wards developed  into  the  cuneiform.  The  great  cities  of  Chaldea 
were  founded  by  them  and  educated  people  learned  the  extinct 
Accadian  language  as  we  do  Latin. 

Hilprecht^  unearthed  50,000  valuable  records  or  tablets  of 
Babylonian  bricks  at  Nippur,  the  ancient  Calneh  of  Genesis  10-10. 
When  Abraham  was  about  leaving  Ur,  the  great  library  at  Nip- 
pur was  ruined  by  the  Elamites,  whose  hordes  were  the  inveterate 
enemies  of  the  Babylonians,  finally  conquering  Babylonia  when 
Cyrus  was  king  of  Elam.  Professor  Hilprecht  says  that  we  can 
no  longer  hesitate  to  date  the  founding  of  the  temple  of  Bel  and 
the  first  settlements  in  Nippur  between  6000  and  7000  B.  C,  possi- 
bly even  earlier.  This  Calneh  of  the  bible  and  Nuffer  of  the 
modern  Arabs,  is  eighty  miles  southeast  of  Bagdad,  in  the  Meso- 
potamian  plain,  half  way  between  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates  rivers, 
a  ruined  city  with  rubbish  piles  sixty  feet  high.     The  earliest  fixed 

^  Recent  Research  in  bible  Lands,  p.  47,  and  Sunday  School  Ti'mes, 
Dec.  I,  1900. 

54 


THE    SEMITES.  55 

(late  in  Babylonian  history  is  that  of  Sargon  of  Akkael.  Nabon- 
ides,  the  royal  antiqarian  of  Babylonia,  made  a  record  of  dynas- 
ties, through  his  excavations,  extending  back  32CXD  years  earlier. 
Babylon  was  the  first  seat  of  civilization,  and  Egypt  derived  its 
civilization  thence.  Four  thousand  years  B.  C.  there  was  inter- 
course between  Egypt  and  Babylonia,  the  civilization  of  which 
reached  Tyre,  Sidon  and  Carthage.  Its  arts  and  business  ideas 
spread  over  the  world  when  Arya  was  nothing,  and  the  Babylo- 
nian empire  was  old  when  Rome  was  rising. 

Philologists  group  a  Semitic  speech  family  as  consisting  of 
I.  Hebrew  and  Phoenician ;  II.  Aramiac ;  III.  Assyrian  and 
Bablyonian ;  IV.  Arabian ;  V.  South  Arabian,  and  VI .  Ethi- 
opian, but  this  similarity  of  language  does  not  constitute  race  nor 
a  common  origin.  The  term  Semitic  race  was  an  unfortunately 
incorrect  invention  of  Eichhorn. 

The  absence  of  wood  and  stone  made  brick  the  material  of 
Babylonian  superioity.  Artificial  lakes  and  canals,  agriculture, 
navigation,  astronomy,  commerce,  with  gold  and  silver  money, 
were  theirs.  Their  rich  soil,  large  river,  the  brick  and  the  ship 
built  up  ancient  Babylonia,  and  the  writing  tablet  made  trade 
secure.  When  Greece  and  Rome  developed  a  high  civilization 
derived  from  Babylon,  the  Teutons  and  Slavs  were  low  in  the 
scale  of  progress.  Phoenicians  were  the  medium  through  which 
Babylon  taught  the  Aryans,  who  are  really  the  heirs  of  the  Sem- 
ites, and  even  the  plastic  art  of  Egypt  and  later  countries  is  from 
Babylon.  In  Sargon's  time  running  writing,  cursive  script,  had 
taken  the  place  of  hieroglyphics  and  pictographs,  and  with  Sargon 
began  the  Semitic  age.  The  Egyptian  conquest  partitioned  Meso- 
potamia in  1600  B  C,  and  vassal  Arabs  of  Egypt  sat  upon  the 
Babylonian  throne.  Upper  Babylonia  was  too  far  from  Egypt, 
and  so  was  able  to  remain  independent.  Mesopotamia  was  re- 
united by  the  overthrow  of  Egyptian  control  in  1400  B.  C,  but 
though  Babylon  had  her  own  kings,  they  were  satraps  of  Assyria, 
whose  capital  was  at  Nineveh. 

The  inventors  of  the  cuneiform  system  of  writing  had  been  a 
people  who  preceded  the  Semites  in  the  occupation  of  Babylonia 
and  who  spoke  an  agglutinative  language  utterly  diflfering  from 
their  Semitic  successors.     These  Akkadians  left  much  literature 


56  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

which  was  highly  prized  by  the  Semitic  Babylonians  and  Assyr- 
ans.^  The  Semitic  scribes  improved  upon  the  Sumerian  writing. 
The  Chaldeans  settled  at  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates,  a  fertile  re- 
gion like  the  Nile.  In  2,160  years  46  miles  of  land  have  formed 
between  the  Persian  gulf  and  the  former  mouth  of  the  river,  and 
Eridu,  a  seaport  town  dating  to  6500  B.  C,  is  now  130  miles  in- 
land from  the  present  coast.  Nippur  still  farther  inland  on  a 
canal  between  the  Tigris  and  the  Euphrates  rivers,  was  the  chief 
sanctuary  and  religious  center  of  the  civilized  world.  Nippur,  Ur 
and  Eridu  were  the  three  earliest  cities  of  ancient  Babylon.  The 
Sumerians  preceded  the  Semites  in  city  building.  The  Babylon- 
ians were  a  mixture  of  races,  according  to  Berosus,  the  Chaldean 
historian,  and  their  country  was  won  from  the  sea  as  prevailing 
accounts  stated,  which  would  also  parallel  the  spread  of  the  Aryan 
race  down  the  Oxus  river  as  its  valleys  were  created  by  the  fall 
of  the  ancient  ocean. 

The  rule  of  Sargon  extended  to  the  island  of  Cyprus,  and  his 
people,  a  compound  of  Sumerians,  Semites  and  Elamites,  left  en- 
during traces  on  West  Asia  and  the  world  through  the  inclination 
races  have  to  intermix.  Racial  intermarriages  produce  superior 
offspring  often,  though  it  would  be  out  of  our  power  to  affirm 
that  any  race  has  not  mixed  with  another  at  some  time. 

Irrigation  for  agriculture  necessitated  engineering  and  the 
nearness  to  the  sea  gave  impetus  to  trade  with  southern  Arabia 
and  Egypt,  so  there  were  surveyors,  merchants  and  sailors  as 
well  as  farmers. 

The  absence  of  stone  from  the  country  and  the  expense  of 
papyrus  led  to  writing  upon  clay  tablets  which  were  often  baked 
to  make  the  record  permanent.  Originally  these  inscriptions  were 
mere  pictures  of  objects  imperfectly  conveying  their  meaning, 
but  these  in  time  changed  into  wedge  shaped  marks  in  regular 
lines  from  right  to  left ;  what  were  formerly  curves  in  the  pictures 
were  changed  to  angles  and  finally  the  writing  was  simplified  by 
omitting  as  many  marks  as  possible,  and  in  this  way  the  Baby- 
lonian writing  evolved.  These  cuneiform  characters  were  as  nu- 
merous as  words  and  were  committed  to  memory  by  the  children 
of  that  day.    They  were  also  taught  to  use  dictionaries,  grammars, 

'A.  H.  Sayce,  Fresh  Lights  from  the  Ancient  Monuments,  Ch.  I. 


THE    SEMITES.  57 

reading  books,  mostly  Siimerian,  exercises,  history  and  geogra- 
phy, poetry  and  prose.  A  superstitious  reverence  for  names  was 
drilled  into  the  people  at  all  ages. 

The  fertility  of  Babylonian  soil  was  such  that  grain  returned 
300  fold  when  planted.  Wheat  and  barley  with  other  cereals  were 
raised  in  great  abundance.  The  patriarchal  and  matriarchal  prin- 
ciples struggled  for  supremacy,  in  which  the  father  and  mother 
took  precedence. 

Sarzec  found  32,000  tablets  in  regular  order  in  the  southern 
part  of  Chaldea  where  they  had  been  placed  about  B.  C.  2700. 
Some  of  the  tablets  had  writing  so  small  that  it  required  a  micro- 
scope to  read  the  characters.  In  the  British  Museum  is  a  magni- 
fying glass  found  by  Layard  at  Ninevah  and  it  was  therefore  pre- 
sumed that  the  Assyrians  sometimes  used  such  means  of  reading 
and  inscribing  minute  writing.  But  this  rude  instrument  does 
not  indicate  much  optical  knowledge  or  skill  in  those  far  off  times. 

A  lot  of  false  sciences  existed  in  those  days  and  the  records 
upturned  and  deciphered  pertain  to  history,  chronology,  geogra- 
phy, law,  private  and  public  correspondence,  despatches  from  gen- 
erals, royal  proclamations,  lists  of  bears,  birds,  insects,  stones, 
stars,  and  other  natural  science  matters,  writings  upon  philology, 
astrology,  theology,  omens,  poems,  with  deeds,  contracts,  legal  de- 
cisions, inventories,  stored  in  ancient  libraries  of  Assyria  and 
Babylonia.  The  museum  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania  con- 
tains many  of  these  records  and  among  them  are  730  tablets  found 
by  the  Peters  and  Hilprecht  expedition  at  Nippur  over  the  site  of 
the  former  royal  library,  which  proved  to  be  the  business  doc- 
uments of  some  merchants  named  Marashu  Sons,  shrewd  Sem- 
ites, subjects  of  Artaxerxes  and  Darius  II,  during  the  fifty  years 
between  B.  C.  464  and  later.  Their  clients  were  Semites,  Per- 
sians, Greeks,  Medes,  Judaens,  Sabaens,  Edomites  and  oth- 
ers. The  boundary  between  Babylon  and  Assyria  dates  B. 
C.  1450,  and  Shalmaneser  I  reigned  about  B.  C.  1300. 
The  first  known  priest-king  or  patesis  of  Asshur  is  assigned 
to  B.  C.  1800.  The  Assyrians  excelled  in  the  ferocities 
of  war  but  not  in  the  arts  of  peace.'*  Assyrian  chro- 
nology  is   definitely   settled   as   between   B.    C.    1330   to   B.    C. 

^Z.  A.  Rogozin,  Medea,  Babylonia  and  Persia,  1898. 


58  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

620/  The  Assyrian  then  rose  to  pre-eminence  in  western 
Asia  till  in  after  centuries  they  yielded  to  the  new  Babylonian 
regime  founded  by  the  Chaldeans  from  the  shores  of  the  Persian 
gulf.  Babylon  seemed  to  have  recovered  the  upper  hand  from  B. 
C.  1060  to  1020,  but  the  second  Assyrian  empire  regained  control 
and  armies  overran  the  region  from  the  Caspian  to  the  Persian 
gulf,  and  from  the  tenth  to  the  seventh  centuries  B.  C.  the  Assyr- 
ian supremacy  was  vast  and  formidable  and  then  suddenly  ceased 
through  the  treachery  of  a  general,  who  was  sent  to  quell  a  Baby- 
lonian insurrection,  making  himself  king  of  Babylon  and  conspir- 
ing with  his  former  enemies  to  overthrow  Assyria. 

The  Persians,  who  must  have  been  mixed  Aryans  and  Sem- 
ites, were  first  mentioned  by  Assyrian  kings  in  the  middle  of  the 
ninth  century  B.  C.  They  were  found  in  southwest  Armenia  in 
close  contact  with  the  Medes.     The  Persian  empire  began  about 

B.  C.  550.  The  Medes  and  the  Babylonians  combined  in  the  sev- 
enth century  B.  C.  to  overthrow  the  Assyrian  power. ^  Cyrus  the 
Great  who  was  king  of  Elam  B.  C.  549,  became  king  of  Persia  in 
546  by  the  overthrow  of  Babylonia,  Media,  Persia  and  Lydia. 
The  Elamites  had  previously,  thirty  to  twenty-two  centuries  B. 

C,  destroyed  Babylonia. 

According  to  Simcox  Akkad  was  non-Semite  and  the  lan- 
guage had  affinities  with  the  Chinese,  and  the  speech  of  the  found- 
ers, the  Sumerians,  of  the  Mesopotamian  civilization  was  akin  to 
that  of  the  Turks,  an  intimation  that  the  non-Aryans  who  pre- 
ceded the  Babylonians  were  Turanians.  The  mixed  Sumerian 
and  Semite  language  was  brought  to  the  Mediterranean  shores 
and  to  Egypt  in  the  earliest  days  of  Egyptian  history.  The  Eu- 
phrates like  the  Nile  had  annual  inundations  and  occasionally  it 
would  appear  that  many  of  the  overflows  were  like  those  of  the 
Oxus  of  old  and  the  Yellow  river  of  China  of  the  present  day, 
sweeping  whole  populations  before  them.  The  empire  of  Sargon 
of  Akkad  extended  from  the  Persian  gulf  to  the  Mediterranean, 
beyond  this  the  first  dynasty  of  Ur  had  to  keep  up  perpetual  war- 
fare with  the  Semitic  tribes  of  northern  Arabia,  Ki-sawa,  the 
''land  of  the  hordes,"  as  it  was  termed  by  the  Sumerians. 

*  E.  A.  W.  Budge,  Babylonian  Life  and  History,  Ch.  III. 
''L.  von  Ranke,  Universal  History,  Ch.  HI. 


THE    SEMITES. 


59 


The  first  Egyptian  dynasty  is  placed  at  B.  C.  4777  and  the 
nineteenth  at  B.  C.  1327  by  Petrie.  The  culture  of  primitive 
Egypt  is  derived  from  Chaldea  and  the  language  of  Egypt  is  a 
Babylonian  mixture  of  Sumerian  and  Semitic.^  There  are  wall 
paintings  along  the  Nile  valley  representing  antique  races  of 
brown  Copts,  black  negroes  and  white  people,  very  likely  the 
founders  of  the  Egyptian  peasantry  who  have  reverted  to  the 
characteristics  of  the  least  intelligent  of  their  ancestry.  At  Kop- 
tos  on  the  Nile  the  ruins  date  back  to  B.  C.  5000,  with  mention  of 
a  period  5Cmd  years  earlier.  Mud  deposits  at  the  mouth  of  the 
Nile  are  calculated  as  dating  back  to  8,000  years  ago.  Cretan  ex- 
plorations show  intercourse  with  Egypt  about  2000  B.  C,  with 
clay  tablets  like  those  of  Babylonia,  but  with  two  kinds  of  script, 
oae  of  which  is  linear  and  the  other  is  half  pictorial.  The  money 
of  ancient  Egypt  resembles  the  ring  money  of  the  ancient  Baby- 
lonians and  that  which  was  current  among  the  Celts  in  Ireland 
as  late  as  the  twelfth  century  after  Christ,  and  similar  to  what  is 
still  in  circulation  in  the  interior  of  Africa.  Each  people  may 
have  originated  the  ring  money  separately,  in  some  few  cases 
learning  the  idea  from  others. 

Simcox  speaks  of  Egypt,  Babylonia  and  China  as  the  three 
great  seats  of  archaic  civilization^  and  mentions  the  fertility  of 
the  soil,,  abundance  of  food,  ancient  and  modern  abuses,  mainly 
such  as  occur  everywhere  in  the  weak  being  oppressed  by  the 
strong.  Agriculture  and  cattle  farming  were  highly  developed, 
the  administration  being  through  stewards.  The  Egyptians  had 
the  institution  of  slavery  as  well  as  had  other  nations,  the  origin 
being  in  captives  and  their  descendents  being  compelled  to  work 
for  their  captors.  Practically  the  entire  population  was  enslaved 
for  the  ruling  classes  absorbed  the  labor  of  the  peasants  without 
recompense,  and  these  miserable  creatures  submitted  to  endless 
abuse ;  starved,  naked,  beaten,  murdered,  they  were  set  gigantic 
tasks  by  their  masters.  The  great  temple  of  Karnak  and  the  pyr- 
amids designed  by  Babylonian  engineers  for  the  Egyptian  priests 
and  kings  were  piled  up  by  brute  strength ;  thousands  of  human 

"A.  H.  Sayce,  Recent  Discoveries  in  Babylon,  Contemporary  Review, 

Jan.,  1897. 
'  E.  J.  Simcox,  Primitive  Civilization.  1894. 


6o  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

cattle  pulled  and  pushed  stones  up  inclined  planes  of  earth  hills 
they  had  previously  built  and  afterwards  removed ;  this  simple 
explanation  disposing  of  the  mystery  of  these  vast  constructions, 
none  of  which  is  as  wonderful  as  our  modern  engineering  or  ar- 
chitectural works  except  to  the  emotional  unreasoning  worship- 
ers of  things  ancient  merely  because  they  are  ancient,  such  as 
Piazzi  Smyth  and  his  class.  The  Egyptian  rulers  were  anxious 
10  save  their  souls  by  preserving  their  bodies  till  the  judgment 
day,  the  superstition  being  that  the  soul  was  lost  if  the  body  de- 
cayed. It  mattered  nothing  to  the  kings  how  many  common  souls 
were  destroyed  in  saving  their  royal  carcasses,  and  the  spirit  of 
this  sort  of  "other-worldliness"  prevails  today.  Another  sur- 
vival from  such  crude  times  is  the  idea  that  God  is  a  big  man, 
the  Egyptian  gods  and  kings  were  all  sculptured  as  giants  whije 
the  common  people  were  represented  by  small  figures.  The  mis- 
ery of  the  lower  classes  of  Egypt  is  detailed  by  Maspero.'*  Brit- 
ish Museum  papyri  dating  to  the  thirteenth  century  B.  C.  con- 
tain caricatures  of  Rameses  III  who  was  not  liked  by  the  intelli- 
gent classes  for  his  vanity,  egotism  and  lack  of  tact.  He  had 
placed  a  vainglorius  record  of  his  victories  over  people  south, 
east  and  west.  A  caricature  represents  him  as  the  king  of  rats 
in  a  chariot  drawn  by  dogs,  scaring  a  fortress  full  of  cats  who  beg 
for  mercy,  a  sarcastic  reminder  of  his  lying  boasts  of  having  con- 
quered stronger  and  better  races. 

W.  M.  Flinders  Petrie  judges  from  the  pictures  of  ancient  men 
and  women  with  full  foreheads  and  aquiline  noses  that  in  the 
early  man  of  Egypt  we  had  to  deal  with  an  European  race  more 
or  less  mixed  with  the  negro.  He  says  that  there  are  9,000  years 
unbroken  in  chains  of  events  in  Egyptian  history  and  yet  we  are 
far  from  the  beginning.  There  are  traces  that  civilization  must 
have  come  in  from  another  country  with  copper  and  fine  work  in 
fiint  and  stone  and  good  pottery.  In  the  earliest  graves  figures  of 
a  race  of  the  bushmen  type  were  found  similar  to  those  found 
both  in  France  and  Malta  suggesting  that  the  race  may  have  ex- 
tended over  Africa  into  Europe.  There  were  figures  of  captured 
women  from  the  earlier  race  which  was  probably  paleolithic.  The 
climate  was  totally  dififerent  from  what  it  is  today,  and  the  rain- 

®  Dawn  of  Civilization,  p.  339. 


THE    SEMITES.  *  6l 

fall  fertilized  what  is  now  a  desert,  and  animals  of  which  all  trace 
is  lost  inhabited  the  country.  Petrie  places  the  age  of  Abraham 
after  the  XII  dynasty  of  the  kings  of  Egypt.  Pottery  of  the 
Greek  pattern  was  found  in  the  tombs  of  Egyptian  kings  of  the 
first  dynasty,  which  proves  civilization  on  both  shores  of  the  Med- 
iterranean at  the  same  time.  The  Exodus  was  during  the  XIX 
dynasty  and  Shishah  early  in  Jewish  monarchy  in  the  XXII  dy- 
nasty of  Egypt.  Among  the  important  dates  we  have  B.  C.  4777 
for  the  first  and  B.  C.  1327  for  the  nineteenth  dynasty.  Early 
records  at  Koptos  B.  C.  5500;  Crete  traded  with  Egypt  in  B.  C. 
2000;  the  Egyptian  conquest  of  Mesopotamia  B.  C.  1600;  Ra- 
meses  II  B.  C.  1330;  Egyptian  conquest  of  Persia  B.  C.  525. 
Brugsch  dates  the  founding  of  the  great  pyramids  of  the  Hyksos 
in  Egypt  at  B.  C.  2200  to  1700,  and  the  period  of  greatest  im- 
perial power  in  Egypt  as  B.  C.  1750  to  1250. 

At  present  the  lower  classes  in  Egypt  are  increasing  at  a  rapid 
rate  under  the  English  protection.  The  improvements  introduced 
into  Egypt  by  the  English  government  enables  a  larger  population 
to  live,  the  new  dams  of  the  Nile  save  water  to  fertilize  wide 
plains  and  the  average  peasant  is  enabled  to  have  more  wives  and 
cigarettes  as  well  as  better  food  in  abundance.  Thus  human 
vermin  increase  under  favorable  circumstances,  but  bad  times  may 
kill  off  millions  of  these  simple  folk,  as  when  famine  wipes  out 
hosts  in  India  and  the  Yellow  river  changes  its  course  through  a 
populous  country  and  drowns  out  villages  and  plains  full  of  mon- 
gols,  and  with  animal  shortsightedness  the  Chinese  chop  off  all 
the  tree-s  on  a  mountain  range  causing  a  failure  of  the  rains  and 
several  million  pig-tailed  lice  perish  as  ants  and  rats  do  from  mis- 
haps of  nature. 

The  Hebrews  are  the  first  mentioned  as  living  near  the  Baby- 
lonians and  were  classed  with  them  as  Semites  because  of  sim- 
ilarity of  language.  They  were  pastoral  in  the  fertile  plains  of 
Goshen  and  occupied  the  north  of  Egypt  under  Pharoah,  but  they 
mingled  little  with  others  and  kept  their  own  Israelitish  manners 
and  customs,  and  like  every  other  race  believed  in  their  own  su- 
periority. They  traded  for  ages  and  had  a  written  language  and 
resembled  the  Assyrians  in  many  ways.  They  never  developed 
as  farmers  or  soldiers  nor  sailors,  hence  they  were  easily  con- 


62  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

quered  and  scattered,  but  they  had  great  mercantile  abihty.  S.  L. 
Clemens  suggested  that  their  superiority  in  trade  of  both  honest 
and  dishonest  kinds  excited  the  envy  of  all  their  neighbors  and 
accounted  for  their  being  in  disfavor  and  the  pretexts,  religious 
and  otherwise,  to  rob  them.  The  hostility  and  persecutions  they 
encountered  date  further  back  than  the  Christian  era.  Even 
where  they  mixed  with  other  races  the  Jewish  peculiarities  re- 
mained prominent.  Oppenheim"  shows  that  in  the  modern  Jews 
there  are  the  traces  of  their  wanderings  in  resemblances  to  the 
tribes  with  which  they  mixed,  Slav,  Teuton,  Iberian,  etc.,  "while 
in  the  streets  of  New  York  one  may  easily  recognize  skulls  and 
lineaments  as  clearly  ancient  Assyrian  as  one  can  possibly  hope 
to  find." 

The  Lydians  who  were  conquered  by  Greece  in  B.  C.  looo 
were  an  allied  Semitic  people  of  the  west  coast  of  Asia  i^linor. 
Modern  approximate  dates  for  Hebrew  chronology^  are  Mesopo- 
tamian  pastoral  tribes  B.  C.  7000;  Abraham  B.  C.  2000;  exodus 
from  Egypt  1200;  David  king  of  Hebrews  1000;  Saul  king  1055 ; 
Solomon  king  933  ;  Jerusalem  captured  by  Egypt  949;  Hosea  king 
734 ;  Nebuchadnezzar  takes  Jerusalem  597. 

Phoenicians  as  far  back  as  B.  C.  3000  occupied  Greece  and 
the  Aegean  islands.  Their  civilization  was  from  Egypt  and  Baby- 
lonia.^^ They  were  mentioned  by  Herodotus  and  Pliny  with  the 
Canaanites  at  about  B.  C.  2400.  Amorites  overthrew  the  Hittites 
B.  C.  1300  and  a  reaction  took  place  in  the  cities  of  Phoenicia. 
Slave  dealing,  money  trading  and  mining  were  the  chief  indus- 
tries, which  did  not  prove  to  be  moralizing  influences. ^^  Phoenicia 
became  subject  to  Assyria  and  Babylon  B.  C.  850  to  538.  The 
Etruscans  were  supposed  to  have  been  Phoenicians  like  those  of 
Carthage  and  Marseilles  who  were  driven  from  their  original 
home.^^  About  B.  C.  2000  Semitic  immigrants  from  the  East  be- 
gan to  supplant  the  Phoenicians  in  Syria.  Rawlinson  says  that 
the  "father  of  history"  assigned  their  origin  to  the  Persian  gulf, 

'  The  Development  of  the  Child,  p.  69. 

"D.  G.  Hogarth,  Authority  and  Archaeology. 

"  Rawlinson,  History  of  Phoenicia,  Ch.  XIV. 

"  F.  Haverfield,  Authority  and  Archaeology,  p.  305. 


THE    SEMITES.  63 

and  Renan  also  derives  them  from  this  region. ^^  Their  migration 
may  have  required  a  century.  RawHnson  includes  a  period  from 
the  fourteenth  to  the  fourth  century  B.  C.  when  they  dwelt  in 
Syria  during  which  all  Mediterranean  and  eastern  countries  came 
in  contact  with  them;  they  were  hardy  mariners  who  visited  all 
shores  between  India,  Spain  and  Britain,  which  last  named  place 
they  discovered.  Their  religious  rites  were  cruel  and  licentious 
and  like  the  early  Norsemen  they  were  often  pirates.  It  need  not 
be  supposed  that  the  Druids  and  Norse  learned  their  cruelties 
from  their  Phoenician  visitors  for  such  traits  are  common  herit- 
ages of  all  mankind  from  our  animal  ancestry,  remaining  with  us 
in  all  degrees  of  intensity. 

"Histoire  des  langues  semitique,  II.,  2,  p.  183. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE  MIDDLE  AGES. 

When  history  repeats  itself  it  is  usually  because  the  same  old 
causes  operate,  the  same  old  animal  ferocity,  greed  or  fear  during 
age  after  age  give  us  the  same  old  results,  and  while  modern 
nations  are  actuated  largely  by  the  motives  of  their  ancestry  in 
disguised,  refined  and  complicated  ways,  it  seldom  occurs  to  us 
to  analyze  events  on  the  basis  of  what  is  inherited  from  not  only 
primitive,  savage  people,  but  from  even  more  remote  predatory 
and  hunted  animals.  The  behavior  of  tribes  of  barbarians 
closely  copies  that  of  a  wilderness  full  of  apes,  and  civilized 
nations  too  often  are  barbarous  in  their  notions  and  doings, 
especially  when  checks  upon  actions  are  removed.  The  Middle 
ages  were  not  worse  than  preceding  periods  but  there  have  come 
down  to  us  records  from  those  times  less  confused  with  fairy 
yarns,  such  as  abounded  in  the  tales  of  earlier  days  when  few 
knew  how  to  write  or  even  observe  properly.  Stripping  away 
the  exaggeration  and  glamor  associated  with  th,e  Roman  achieve- 
ments we  can  have  a  more  intelligent  grasp  of  such  and  other 
events  through  glancing  at  the  caperings  of  troops  of  monkeys 
or  by  fancying  what  great  bands  of  the  anthropoid  apes,  like 
the  gorilla  or  chimpanzee,  would  do  were  they  more  gregarious. 
Many  wild  beasts  follow  the  leader  who  is  most  powerful.  Packs 
of  wolves  can  be  readily  divided  between  the  strong  leader  and 
the  passive  led,  with  an  intermediate  few  who  are  jealous  of  the 
leader  and  who  conspire  to  destroy  him.  Gibbon  begins  his 
renowned  history  with  the  beastly  antics  of  the  degenerate  son 
of  the  complaisant  Marcus  Aurelius  and  dissolute  Faustina. 
This  son,  Commodus,  after  inexpressible  excesses,  was  poisoned 
by  conspirators,  and  the  attempted  reforms  of  Pertinex  infuriated 
the  corrupt  soldiery.  They  loved  war,  rapine  and  license,  the 
plunder  of  provinces,  the  bribes  of  officers,  the  capture  of  matrons 

64 


THE    MIDDI.E    AGES.  65 

and  maidens.  After  killing  Pertinex  the  hundred  thousand 
soldiers  held  in  subjection  ten  milions  of  unarmed  people.  A 
standing  army  places  any  nation  at  the  mercy  of  a  general.  There 
are  two  factors,  however,  that  operate  more  in  modern  times  to 
annul  this  danger,  one  is  the  higher  animus  of  the  average 
general  rendering  him  more  likely  to  be  loyal,  and  the  other 
is  the  lifted  plane  of  intelligence  of  the  people,  until  as  was  re- 
cently attempted,  conspiracies  to  exploit  honors  and  prize  money 
by  a  naval  and  war  office  ring  were  only  partially  successful. 
The  Pretorian  guard  of  the  Rome  of  the  second  Christian  cen- 
tury with  its  sixteen  thousand  sufficed  to  overawe  the  four  million 
people,  the  passive  citizens  of  Rome,  and  through  the  senate  to 
control  an  empire  of  a  hundred  and  fifty  million.  The  soldiers 
sold  the  throne  to  the  highest  bidder,  Julian,  but  the  absent  vic- 
torious armies  had  to  be  heard  from.  Severus  with  twenty 
thousand  men  from  across  the  Adriatic,  Clodius  Albinus  with  a 
similar  force  in  Britain,  and  Pescennius  Niger  with  an  army 
greater  than  both,  in  Syria,  each  declared  an  emperor  and 
marched  to  Rome  to  enthrone  him.  Severus  outwitted  them 
all,  after  battles  in  which  kindred  were  slain  by  thousands;  on 
his  deathbed  he  advised  his  sons  to  enrich  the  soldiers  at  any  price 
and  to  treat  the  rest  of  the  subjects  as  ciphers.  Caracella  killed 
his  brother  Geta  and  twenty  thousand  of  his  friends  and  was 
murdered  in  his  turn  by  a  soldier,  whereupon  the  army  selected 
a  new  emperor,  Macrinus,  this  being  the  method  of  divine  choice 
of  rulers.  Upon  his  attempting  to  make  the  least  change  for 
economy  sake  in  army  affairs  he  was  promptly  removed  by  death, 
as  promptly  as  an  honest  office  holder  would  be  suppressed  today 
by  Tammany.  Elagabalus,  the  high  priest  of  the  sun,  the  pon- 
tifex  maximus  and  emperor,  with  his  gorgeous  tiara  entered 
Rome,  conspiring  with  the  soldiers  to  be  divinely  selected,  and 
rioted  in  imperial  wealth  and  power  with  grossest  dissoluteness. 
Rome  sickened  of  his  beastliness  and  after  killing  him  the  senate 
passed  a  decree  consigning  his  name  to  etgrnal  infamy.  The 
guard  elected  Alexander  Severus,  who  tried  to  make  many 
changes  for  the  better,  but  the  soldiers  expressed  their  dislike  of 
reforms  by  killing  multitudes  to  teach  the  new  emperor  his  place, 
and  finally  killing  him  they  raised  the  giant  baboon  Maximin 


66  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

over  themselves.  He  robbed  his  own  temples  in  his  greed  and 
even  his  rotten  priests  and  army  could  not  bear  his  cruelties,  and 
as  he  was  marching  to  quell  a  revolt  in  Rome  the  soldiers  killed 
him  and  accepted  the  two  rulers  named  by  the  senate,  but  soon 
killed  them  off  and  set  up  Gordian,  who  was  poisoned  by  Philip, 
a  general  who  conspired  to  take  his  place,  but  the  Danube  army 
repudiated  this  choice  of  the  Persian  army  and  elected  ^vlarinus, 
one  of  their  own  generals.  Philip  sent  Decius  to  use  his  personal 
influence  with  the  Danube  army  in  his  behalf,  but  that  army  com- 
pelled Decius  to  accept  the  post  of  emperor  and  repudiated  ^lar- 
inus.  Decius  routed  the  army  of  Philip  and  cut  his  head  off. 
The  Pretorian  guard  welcomed  the  new  sovereign  who  had  so 
many  legions  behind  him.  In  A.  D.  250  the  northern  barbarians 
defeated  the  Roman  armies  and  the  senate  chose  two  emperors 
on  the  death  of  Decius,  one  to  remain  at  Rome  as  civil  governor 
while  Gallus  was  to  be  military  emperor ;  the  civil  governor  died 
suddenly,  Gallus  was  murdered  by  the  senate,  and  it  appointed 
Emelianus.  The  Roman  empire  at  this  time  encircled  the  Med- 
iterranean sea.  Emelianus  was  killed  by  his  soldiers  and  Ya- 
lerian  was  selected  and  a  march  made  to  repel  the  Persian  in- 
vasion while  his  son  Gallienus  tried  to  keep  out  the  Franks  who 
overran  the  country :  Valerian  was  killed  by  the  Persians,  Gal- 
lienus was  inefficient  and  cruel  and  was  finally  assassinated.  The 
population  of  Rome  decreased  one-half  by  wars,  pestilence  and 
famine,  while  different  bands  of  the  army  were  incessantly  elect- 
ing new  emperors,  thirty  candidates  at  one  time  being  fought 
over.  Claudius  succeeded  Gallienus  and  died  trying  to  head  off 
the  Goths ;  Aurelian,  his  successor,  vanquished  them,  but  he  was 
killed  by  his  own  officers.  For  two  centuries  out  of  a  great 
number  of  emperors  only  three  or  four  died  a  natural  death,  -the 
good  and  bad  alike  were  doomed  to  a  bloody  end.  The  eight 
months  when  Rome  was  without  an  emperor  were  the  best  the 
city  had  at  that  period.  Tacitus  was  compelled  to  be  emperor 
and  was  murdered  by  his  soldiers ;  Probus  was  chosen  and  was 
also  killed  by  mutineers  and  the  army  elected  Carus  and  killed 
him,  then  selected  Carinus  and  Numerian,  the  two  sons  of  Carus, 
as  emperors.  Numerian  died  and  Diocletian,  a  slave  who  suc- 
ceeded Carinus  at  Rome,  set  out  to  fight  Diocletian  and  was  killed 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  67 

by  a  general  whose  wife  Carinus  had  seduced.  Diocletian  selected 
Maximian  to  help  him,  Diocletian  to  be  the  head  and  Maximian 
the  sword.  They  abdicated  and  at  the  time  of  Constantine  there 
were  six  emperors.  The  east  provinces  took  Licinus  and  the 
west  Constantine,  who  put  Licinus  and  34,000  of  his  soldiers  to 
death.  Constantine  being  sole  emperor  concluded  to  fortify 
himself  by  making  the  new  Christianity  the  state  religion,  but 
he  was  not  baptized  in  that  faith  till  on  his  deathbed.  His  three 
dissolute  sons  divided  the  country  between  them,  barbarians 
flocked  from  all  quarters  upon  the  Roman  garrisons,  Picts  and 
Scots  rushed  down  upon  Britain,  Gothic  tribes  ravaged  the  Rhine 
and  the  dynasty  of  the  Goths  in  Rome  followed.  The  new  church 
copied  the  former  civil  power  in  its  organization,  bishops  and 
priests  filling  the  places  of  mayors  and  aldermen,  the  bishop  of 
Rome  being  the  highest  governor,  assuming  the  title  of  supreme 
pontiff  or  pontifex  maximus,  the  great  bridge  priest  who  sacri- 
ficed to  the  river  gods ;  later  the  term  pope  was  adopted,  which 
is  the  Italian  papa,  the  Greek  church  calling  all  their  priests  by 
that  name,  the  equivalent  of  father.  The  first  three  hundred 
3'ears  or  more  of  the  Christian  era  may  be  said  to  have  belonged 
to  pagan  Rome  when  Jupiter  was  the  chief  god,  then  comes  a 
thousand  years  in  which  the  Christian  empire  went  to  pieces  and 
would  have  been  forever  ended  but  for  the  barbarians  of  the 
north  having  adopted  the  ideas  of  Rome  after  those  ideas  no 
longer  influenced  the  place  of  their  birth.  So  during  the  thou- 
sand years  when  both  pagan  and  papal  Rome  sank  to  insignifi- 
cance the  Prankish  kingdom  grew  in  what  are  now  France  and 
Germany,  and  Charlemagne,  the  Frank,  became  supreme  in  Eu- 
rope. Pope  Leo  III  was  driven  from  Rome  by  its  citizens  and 
fled  to  the  Franks  for  aid,  and  was  restored  to  his  pontifical  chair 
by  Charlemagne  who,  in  the  year  800,  was  rewarded  with  the 
title  of  emperor  of  Romans,  adding  the  extra  head  to  what  is  now 
the  German  eagle  ensign.  The  emperor  Charlemagne  ruling 
while  the  pope  confined  his  control  to  spiritual  affairs,  an  arrange- 
ment which  never  lasted  with  succeeding  governments  any  longer 
than  priest  or  king,  one  or  the  other,  could  grab  both  offices. 


68  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

George  Burton  Adams^  begins  his  summary  of  the  middle 
ages  at  the  time  of  the  fall  of  the  Western  Roman  empire  because 
it  is  the  point  where  all  the  main  forces  of  our  present  civiliza- 
tion are  at  last  together  on  the  stage,  and  he  closes  with  the 
reformation  because  it  is  the  event  that  brought  the  middle  ages 
to  a  close.  Through  Rome  learning  from  Greece  and  that  coun- 
try in  turn  from  Egypt  and  Phoenicia,  the  best  of  Semitic  thought 
and  art  came  into  Europe.  Rome  contributed  her  science  of  law 
and  government  and  furnished  the  imperial  church,  and  when 
German  vigor  was  added  to  all  it  is  apparent  that  our  modern 
civilization  comes  from  Greece,  Rome,  Judea  and  Germany. 
There  was  but  little  gain  in  civilization  between  the  fourth  and 
fourteenth  centuries,  the  work  of  the  middle  ages  was  assimila- 
tion, as  an  animal  gorges  before  waking  to  new  activities,  or 
fallow  ground  prepares  for  productiveness.  The  people  were 
barbarians  without  state  or  nation,  the  darkness  of  ignorance 
made  anarchy  and  insecurity  everywhere.  The  notions  that  had 
gone  forth  from  Rome  gradually  did  their  work,  especially  the 
arrogant  idea  that  Rome  was  destined  to  rule  the  world,  that 
the  ancient  gods  would  triumph,  and  this  conceit  outlasted  ancient 
Rome,  and  was  resurrected  in  Christian  Rome  and  spread  north- 
ward as  Rome  was  again  perishing,  and  the  hypnotic  suggestion, 
the  constant  iteration,  the  oft  told  tradition  did  its  work  in  con- 
nection with  other  propitious  matters,  so  the  Holy  Roman  empire 
was  created  with  fire  and  sword.  Middle  age  thought  and  reason 
could  not  conceive  of  empire  apart  from  Rome,  at  least  it  satisfied 
the  poor  intellects  of  the  time  and  explained  the  operations  of 
Charlemagne.  At  first  the  priests  were  mere  teachers  and  ex- 
horters,  many  of  them  following  common  trades,  but  they  grew 
in  importance  with  success  and  set  themselves  up  as  mediators 
between  God  and  men,  and  found  the  new  business  profitable. 
Of  course  the  profession  increased,  as  easily  earned  rewards 
attract  those  who  would  escape  work,  though  there  were  many 
sincere  priests  in  all  ages  and  religions.  Membership  in  the 
church  came  to  be  regarded  as  necessary  to  reach  heaven,  faith 
did  not  count  for  so  much  as  ceremonies  and  gifts.    A  political 

*  Mediaeval  Civilization. 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  69 

organization  was  the  most  natural  so  the  monarchial  church  arose, 
and  with  it  came  the  old  spirit  of  conquest.  ^When  the  Visi- 
gothic  king  sacked  Rome  in  410  heathenism  perished  and  its  sup- 
porters were  penniless,  the  pope  became  important,  the  rise  of 
the  Carolingian  family  in  France  and  its  alliance  with  the  papacy 
was  another  step,  and  some  confiscated  lands  began  its  temporal 
power.  It  seemed  necessary  to  the  profit  sharers  in  the  new 
religious  organization  to  prove  a  far  off  divine  origin  for  their 
church,  so  what  are  known  as  the  pseudo-Isidorian  decretals  were 
forged  to  deceive  the  people  into  thinking  that  the  church  had 
not  grown  up  naturally  from  small  beginnings,  as  things  every- 
where usually  do.  They  were  gotten  up  in  the  eighth  century 
to  support  the  papal  claims  to  the  right  to  rule  the  world ;  one 
paper  was  a  pretended  edict  of  Constantine  granting  to  the  pope 
sovereignty  over  the  west,  and  there  were  fabricated  letters  and 
early  papal  decrees,  and  these  forgeries  are  full  of  mistakes  about 
historical  facts  and  dates,  depending  upon  the  ignorance  of  the 
people  at  that  time  to  escape  detection. 

In  pagan  Rome  the  religious  officials  consisted  in  six  augurs, 
who  claimed  to  be  able  to  tell  events  by  observing  the  way  that 
birds  would  fly,  and  the  auspices  ascertained  the  will  of  the  gods 
regarding  undertakings  by  divination.  The  most  interesting  and 
finally  most  important  official  grew  out  of  the  five  bridge  builders 
or  pontifices  who  built,  or  destroyed  in  case  of  invasion,  the 
bridge  over  the  Tiber, 

These  pontifices  were  the  Roman  engineers  who  understood 
numbers  and  measures  so  that  they  were  employed  to  calculate 
the  calendar,  proclaiming  the  time  of  the  new  and  full  moon,  the 
days  of  festivals,  such  as  the  shortest  day  of  the  year,  for  which 
finally  Christmas  and  New  Year's  day  were  substituted,  though 
such  days  are  merely  near  to  the  shortest  day.  The  pontifices 
saw  that  judicial  and  religious  acts  took  place  at  the  right  time 
and  gradually  they  acquired  control  of  Roman  worship.  The 
president  of  their  college  was  called  the  pontifex  maximus,  and 
that  is  the  term  applied  to  the  Roman  pope.  These  bridge 
builders  called  their  knowledge  "the  sum  of  all  that  was  divine 
and  human."  Let  a  parcel  of  functionaries  have  control  of  the 
little  knowledge  of  their  time  and  like  the  coal  barons  of  America 


yo  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

they  squeeze  the  common  people  out  of  all  that  their  "corner" 
enables  them. 

Monasteries  were  founded  upon  the  idea  that  sure  rewards  in 
heaven  would  follow  upon  giving  up  the  world  and  living  in 
seclusion  and  privation,  often  the  monasteries  became  mere  gar- 
risons to  enable  newly  acquired  lands  to  be  held  in  subjection. 
Civilization  owes  much  to  the  monks  for  they  often  taught  farm- 
ing to  the  barbarous  people  and  started  manufactures  among 
them,  the  poor  were  helped,  and  monastery  walls  were  frequently 
places  of  refuge  against  war  and  oppression.  They  were  often 
the  sole  places  where  order  and  quiet  survived.  Many  books 
were  preserved  in  the  monastic  libraries  which  must  otherwise 
have  been  lost,  and  many  were  the  manuscripts  laboriously  copied 
by  monks,  which  they  frequently  could  not  understand.  Schools 
were  sometimes  connected  with  monasteries  and  the  renewed 
learning  and  science  of  Europe  took  its  first  feeble  steps  under 
the  guidance  of  the  monks.  Falling  inevitably  into  corruption 
the  system  was  as  often  purified  by  earnest  reformers  who,  of 
course,  were  made  to  feel  the  penalty  of  having  tried  to  benefit 
their  fellow  men.  And,  as  Adams  says :  "Very  often  during 
these  centuries  of  darkness  there  lived  on  under  the  sackcloth  of 
the  monk,  after  they  seemed  driven  from  every  other  abode,  the 
principles  of  a  genuine  Christianity,  the  practice  of  its  real  virtues 
and  the  living  of  its  real  life." 

Rome  could  be  likened  to  a  pot  into  which  ideas  from  many 
lands  were  put  to  be  cooked  and  eaten  by  later  guests,  often  the 
ideas  were  half  digested,  but  they  served  to  keep  alive  intellectu- 
ality which  would  have  perished  otherwise.  It  has  also  been 
claimed  that  had  Christianity  remained  the  pure  and  spiritual 
religion  of  its  early  days  it  would  have  been  swept  out  of  exist- 
ence by  the  barbarians,  but  Christianity  had  already  become  cor- 
rupted before  the  influence  of  the  barbarian  races  began  to  be 
felt,  it  may  be  said  to  have  sunk  to  the  level  of  savage  compre- 
hension, the  ceremonies,  knaveries,  appeals  to  fear,  sales  of 
forgiveness,  etc.,  being  what  simple  intelligences  think  they  can 
understand,  but  while  a  system  can  become  rotten  often  there  are 
v^otaries  who  are  sincere  and  who  long  to  make  things  better, 
the  priest  was  often  a  protecting  and  restraining  pow^r  for  good, 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  7I 

while  those  in  charge  of  the  general  policies  of  the  church  were 
utterly  unprincipled;  ecclesiasticism  was  not  Christian,  it  was 
Romanism  of  the  traditional  kind ;  when  most  corrupt  the  church 
hypocritically  but  usefully  held  up  in  theory  the  standard  of  mor- 
ality, which  its  bishops  and  many  of  its  priests  did  not  practice. 
The  notion  gradually  gained  ground  that  the  moral  law  was 
binding  upon  all,  though  to  this  day  the  anthropoids  think  that 
royalty  and  high  church  dignitaries  are  exempt.  From  out  of 
the  middle  ages  came  the  idea  that  the  individual  could  be  free, 
and  that  the  state  is  for  the  people,  contrasted  with  the  older 
notion  that  the  individual  existed  only  for  the  state ;  the  equality 
of  all  men  was  discussed  while  slavery  was  favorably  regarded 
because  intelligence  had  not  developed  sufficiently  to  oppose  it, 
nor  did  the  church  as  such  put  forth  any  of  these  advanced 
thoughts,  it  was  either  here  and  there  that  some  earnest  priest 
exceeded  his  authority  and  dared  to  stand  up  for  truth  as  he  saw 
it,  and  probably  be  punished  for  his  pains,  or  outside  of  the 
church  ideas  would  grow  often  in  spite  of  clerical  opposition,  and 
finally  when  no  longer  possible  to  oppose  them  they  would  be 
adopted  in  some  form  and  then  the  claim  be  made  that  the  church 
had  originated  them.  This  has  been  the  case  with  monogamy, 
anti-slavery,  morality  in  general,  when  in  reality  all  such  matters 
were  forced  upon  church  teachings  often  with  the  utmost  diffi- 
culty. 

The  Goths  and  Lombards  were  Christians  before  entering 
Roman  territory,  but  they  were  Arian  Christians,  a  sort  of  Uni- 
tarian belief,  regarded  as  heresy  by  catholics;  the  Franks  were 
rapidly  converted  to  Christianity,  but  the  Saxons  required  a 
century  and  a  half.  These  savages  brought  into  Rome  their  free 
political  governments,  their  public  assemblies  for  the  making  of 
laws  in  which  every  freeman  had  an  equal  voice,  and  it  was  long 
centuries  before  Roman  influence  corrupted  and  ruined  the  ideas 
of  German  liberty,  but  in  Saxon  England  those  germs  of  liberty 
grew  into  the  free  government  which  America  inherited  and 
which  the  world  is  gradually  being  taught.  The  present  Ger- 
mans have  a  Romanized  system  of  jurispflidence  while  England 
derived  her  laws  from  ancient  uncorrupted  Germanic  principles. 


72  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIMD. 

The  Merovingian  kings,  the  sons  of  Clovis,  fought  among 
themselves.  With  the  rise  of  the  Carolingians  and  the  spHtting 
of  the  Frankish  kingdom,  Austrasia  widened  into  the  Germany 
of  later  history  and  Neiistria  grew  into  France.  Merovingian 
became  a  reproach  as  equivalent  to  lazy  and  worthless,  and 
Charles  Martel  and  his  grandson  Charlemagne  founded  the  Car- 
lovingian  rule.  What  was  known  as  the  Iconoclastic  controversy 
occurred  through  the  patriarch  John  removing  pictures  from  the 
church  of  St.  Sophia  in  712,  Constantine  opposed  this  while  Leo 
in  726  made  an  edict  commanding  all  images  except  the  cross  to 
be  taken  out  of  the  churches.  As  the  images  brought  money  to 
the  priests  and  monks  they  induced  the  people  to  revolt.  Greg- 
ory the  first  and  second  led  the  revolts,  and  massacres  followed. 
The  church  was  split  between  those  who  worshiped  and  those 
who  destroyed  images.  Leo  IV  being  poisoned  by  his  wife  in 
780,  images  triumphed.  A  certain  class  took  middle  ground  to 
retain  images,  but  not  to  worship  them.  Charlemagne  was  not 
pleased  with  the  Nicene  decrees  restoring  images,  so  in  790  he 
caused  books  to  be  written  against  them,  but  the  pontiff  did  not 
favor  his  ideas.  In  794  Charlemagne  called  a  council  of  300 
bishops  at  Frankfort  on  the  Maine  and  the  council  passed  a  rule 
forbidding  the  worship  of  images. 

The  more  intelligent  church  people  nowadays  say  those  im- 
ages are  merely  emblems  and  are  not  worshiped,  but  the  ignorant 
bulk  of  the  devout  do  not  understand  such  refined  notions. 

Communication  was  difficult  and  far  ofif  lords  did  not  even 
know  who  their  kings  were  at  times,  so  centralization  was  imper- 
fect. Security  was  the  first  thing  to  maintain  and  Charlemagne 
arose  to  give  expression  to  the  desire  for  unity  and  peace  in 
Europe  He  tried  to  revive  learning  and  introduce  general  edu- 
cation, but  the  times  were  not  suitable  and  even  his  own  ideas 
were  the  narrow  ones  of  the  period,  showing  that  a  potentially 
great  mind  may  be  stunted  by  the  environment.  In  England 
Theodorus  in  the  seventh  century,  and  Alcuin,  the  great  scholar 
of  the  day,  kept  alive  the  sparks  of  learning.  Their  ideas  im- 
pressed him  to  cause  the  clergy  to  teach  the  people.  Disrupting 
forces  were  too  strong  and  centuries  of  confusion  followed  the 
death  of  Charlemagne.     Germany  and  France  separated,  and  by 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  73 

the  tenth  century  the  separation  was  final  by  dififerences  in  lan- 
guage and  feeling,  but  the  German  kings  were  truckling  to  Rome 
like  the  moth  around  the  candle,  till  German  unity  was  split  into 
numerous  fragments  and  lost  for  long,  terrible  centuries.  In 
what  is  now  France  the  German  conquerers  identified  themselves 
with  Rome  and  under  Hughes  Capet  in  987  began  the  feudal 
system  which  the  kings  fought  unavailingly.  It  enabled  a  tem- 
porary means  for  civil  order,  a  transition  to  better  times.  So- 
ciety was  disorderly,  disorganized,  fragmentary.  A  feudal 
system  is  adapted  to  low  intelligences,  incapable  of  combining  for 
mutual  benefit  without  being  compelled  to  do  so  through  some 
lord  who  takes  advantage  of  their  ability  to  prey  upon  others  for 
his  own  gain,  while  incidentally  preventing  them  from  robbing 
and  destroying  each  other,  because  he  would  lose  their  services 
and  not  the  he  cared  for  their  welfare.  Later  from  habit  and 
convenience  they  refrained  from  cutting  each  other's  throats  and 
after  many  centuries  they  are  beginning  to  feel  the  nonsense  of 
not  respecting  the  lives  and  rights  of  strangers  and  foreigners. 
Modern  public  charities  are  dispensed  by  feudal  political  organi- 
zations like  Tammany.  The  feudal  system  in  anything  and  any- 
where proclaims  selfish  indifference  to  the  common  welfare, 
though  a  keen  desire  to  avoid  harm  to  self  may  exist,  the  average 
anthropoid  being  unable  to  realize  that  by  compelling  respect 
for  the  rights  of  all  his  own  rights  will  best  be  secured. 

Russia  and  other  parts  of  Asia  still  live  under  the  feudal 
methods  which  began  to  be  relinquished  in  Europe  about  the 
tenth  century.  The  system  originated  by  some  one,  who  was 
strong  enough  to  do  so,  grabbing  the  lands  and  charging  the 
others  for  their  use.  The  small  proprietor  often  gave  up  his 
estate  for  protection.  In  Gaul  these  practices  ran  to  extremes 
and  the  chiefs  begrudged  the  very  air  their  dependents  breathed 
because  it  could  not  be  taxed.  As  a  rule  some  one  feudal  chief- 
tain would  prove  to  be  strong  enough  to  lord  it  over  the  others 
within  convenient  distances  and  we  see  the  evolution  of  a  king. 
Circumstances  here  and  there  gathered  kingdoms  under  an  em- 
peror with  the  whole  fabric  breaking  down  and  rearranging  on 
new  lines  with  other  titles,  but  all  amounting  to  the  same  old 
game  of  grab.     The  king  owned  the  kingdom  and  gave  fiefs  to 


74  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

nobles  who  fought  for  him,  and  they  parcelled  out  their  fiefs 
to  vassels  and  so  on  down  to  the  knight's  fee.  The  lord  could 
do  anything  that  governments  do  today,  make  war  and  peace, 
coin  money,  give  charters,  take  life  and  make  servants  of  whom 
he  pleased.  Feudalism  is  called  the  protest  of  barbarism  against 
itself  and  is  the  natural  next  step  after  anarchy.  Feudal  castles 
afforded  both  protection  and  danger  to  friends  and  enemies,  as 
much  to  one  as  to  the  other  often.  Toward  the  last  these  castles 
came  to  be  hated  as  the  strongholds  of  wrong  and  oppression. 
The  Greek  and  Roman  idea  of  the  state  being  the  owner  of  the 
people  led  to  fearful  abuses  in  France  by  the  feudal  lords,  while 
the  German  idea  of  the  state  being  a  mere  creature  of  the  people 
saved  the  Germans  and  English  from  the  worst  effects  of  that 
system.  Feudalism  modified  by  inherent  democracy  of  old 
English  institutions,  daunting  the  lords  and  kings,  never  de- 
graded the  English  as  it  did  the  French  or  Germans.  At  this 
time  England  and  America  are  the  least  oppressed  by  developed 
conditions,  while  Germany  surrendered  too  much  to  Roman  cor- 
ruption of  her  original  ideas  concerning  liberty. 

The  papacy  became  the  prize  of  town  broils  and  the  gift  of 
harlots,  but  Hildebrand,  who  became  Pope  Gregory  VII  in  1073, 
was  a  man  of  intellect,  superior  to  most  of  the  popes.  He  or- 
ganized the  church  into  an  absolute  monarchy  and  secured  the 
present  method  of  selecting  the  pope  by  the  cardinals  and  estab- 
lished celibacy  of  priests.     His  reforms  kicked  him  into  exile. 

The  crusades  followed  to  rescue  the  tomb  of  Christ  from  the 
infidels  and  the  Turks  still  have  it.  But  the  crusades  got  people 
into  the  habit  of  travel,  got  them  over  their  ignorance  of  foreign 
places  and  people,  liberalized  them  in  spite  of  the  clutch  the 
priests  still  attempt  on  their  brains.  Commerce  grew  out  of  this 
and  developed  between  Europe  and  other  countries  until  it  pushed 
into  India  and  China,  the  chief  cities  of  Asia  were  visited,  and 
Mongols  appeared  at  European  courts. 

The  crusades  helped  to  do  away  with  the  feudal  system,  as 
many  nobles  sold  their  lands  to  go  crusading  and  the  isolated  life 
of  the  castle  gave  way  to  the  grab  for  the  brilliance  of  court  life. 
The  crusades  also  did  much  to  give  impulse  to  learning,  to 
awaken   thought   and   increase   intellectual   activity.     There   was 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  /  75 

a  vast  literature  of  the  lives  of  saints  and  martyrs;  the  false 
decretals  were  a  typical  product  of  mediaeval  times,  exhibiting 
dense  ignorance  and  mistakes  that  the  school  boy  of  today  might 
detect,  the  product  of  such  low  cunning  as  ward  politicians  exer- 
cise, especially  when  in  control  of  such  helpless  beings  as  the 
insane  and  the  public  funds  for  their  care.  Scholasticism  arose 
from  absence  of  a  study  of  facts  and  from  deference  to  authority 
such  as  Aristotle ;  the  childish  intellect  of  the  middle  ages  was 
forbidden  to  develop,  to  think,  it  was  fed  upon  superstition  and 
commanded  merely  to  obey  and  hand*  over  its  earnings.  In  Italy, 
Manzoni  says,  bravos  organized  with  impunity,  untouched  by 
proclamations,  for  churches  and  palaces  were  their  asylums  and 
for  hundreds  of  years  they  laughed  at  opposition.  .Knights- 
errant  clad  in  steel  wandered  safely  among  pedestrians,  burghers 
and  villagers*  who  to  repel  their  blows  had  nothing  on  them  but 
rags.  ''Beautiful,  useful  and  sapient  profession !"  The  most 
embarrassing  of  all  conditions  in  those  times  w^as  that  of  an 
animal  without  claws  or  teeth  and  which  nevertheless  had  no 
inclination  to  be  devoured-.  The  Buonaparte  family  of  Florence 
and  later  of  Corsica  descended  from  lords  of  Monte  Boni,  free- 
booters, who  took  toll  from  all  on  the  way  to  Rome  till  the  Flor- 
entines destroyed  their  fortress  because  they  could  not  endure 
that  another  should  do  what  they  refrained  from  doing^*. 

The  ruins  which  travelers  find  so  interesting  along  the  Rhine 
and  in  various  parts  of  Germany  and  France  are  those  of  the 
strong  fortresses  built  by  feudal  lords  during  these  troublous 
times.  The  necessity  which  caused  them  to  be  built  no  longer 
exists  and  most  of  them  are  crumbling  to  decay.  Indeed,  in  the 
eighteenth  century  many  of  them  were  attacked  and  demolished 
by  the  descendants  of  the  peasants  who  had  cheerfully  assisted  in 
building  them.  When  they  were  built  they  meant,  safety  to  the 
cultivators  of  neighboring  lands.  Centuries  later,  when  social 
conditions  were  changed,  they  seemed  to  the  peasants  merely  the 
emblems  of  oppression. 

The   feudal   baron   outrages   and   tortures   even   in   England 

^  A.  Manzoni,  I  Promessi  Sposi,  p.  493. 

*  T.  A.  Trollope.  History  of  the  Commonwealth  of  Florence,  Vol.  I,  p.  50. 


76  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

were  bad  enough  as  described  by  Green*.  They  were  ahnost  as 
bad  as  those  of  the  Spanish  inquisition.  Knight  errantry  would 
produce  lawlessness  in  one  country  and  combine  to  check  law- 
lessness in  another  country.  Romances  describe  the  better  qual- 
ities of  knighthood,  and  ascribed  to  the  knights  imaginary  virtues 
and  prowess;  the  old  trick  of  ancientism.  Nestor  makes  olden 
heroes  superior,  and  Homer  gave  the  strength  of  four  men  to 
each  of  his  favorites  of  Troy. 

William  of  Normandy  broke  down  the  earldoms  and  repudi- 
ated the  claims  of  Rome.  He  protected  the  Jew  because  he  was 
Viseful  to  him.  The  citizens  held  in  England  very  different  re- 
lations to  the  feudal  nobles,  and  William  took  care  to  make  him- 
self supreme  over  them.  The  struggle  later  in  England  was  not 
like  that  on  the  continent,  a  struggle  by  kings  to  win  back  power 
from  their  vassals,  but  it  was  a  struggle  of  the  barons  to  win 
rights  and  privileges  from  the  kings,  and  the  natural  allies,  there- 
fore, of  the  nobles  were  the  citizens. 

Bandits  are  in  the  Caucasus,  and  the  Kurds  still  ravage  Ar- 
menia, and  not  long  ago  bandits  were  in  the  Scottish  Highlands, 
and  wherever  Spain  rules  there  are  ladrones.  In  the  eighth  and 
ninth  centuries  the  piratical  spirit  of  ancient  Greece  revived 
among  the  fierce  Danes  and  Norwegians  who  led  a  life  of  con- 
stant rapine  and  bloodshed,  interminable  warfare  at  home  and 
frightful  devastation  abroad.  Amusement  consisted  in  tossing 
infants  to  be  caught  on  spear  points,  reminding  us  of  what  the 
European  soldiers  were  accused  of  in  the  recent  Chinese  cam- 
paign. It  became  popular  among  some  wild  Scandinavians  to 
become  what  were  known  as  berserkers,  wild  fellows  scantily 
clad  in  animal  skins  who  at  times  became  furious  madmen,  be- 
having like  destructive  beasts. 

Some  of  the  unfairness  with  which  German  women  were 
and  are  treated  may'  be  seen  in  a  sample  law  coming  down  from 
these  rough  days :  The  Ebenbiirtige  which  made  illegitimate  the 
offspring  of  low  caste  marriages.  The  unebenbiirtige  wife  gives 
her  hand  to  a  prince  trusting  not  to  the  law  but  to  his  honor 
not  to  throw  her  aside  when  a  profitable  match  presents.     And 

*  History  of  English  People,  Vol.  I,  p.  128. 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  77 

as  to  the  manner  in  which  the  laboring  poor  are  treated  there  is 
a  favorite  print  in  village  inns  in  Germany  representing  the 
Bauer  and  the  parasites  who  prey  upon  him :  The  emperor 
stands  on  one  step  with  the  motto  "I  live  on  the  taxes/'  a  soldier 
on  a  platform  beneath  says  ''I  pay  for  nothing,"  the  pastor  on  his 
stage  remarks  "I  am  supported  by  the  tithes,"  the  beggar  whines 
"I  live  on  what  is  given  me,"  the  nobleman  airily  says  "I  pay  no 
taxes,"  and  the  Jew  mutters  ''I  bleed  them  all."  Beneath  the 
whole  crew  stands  the  Bauer,  with  bent  back,  exclaiming :  "Dear 
God  help  me,  I  have  to  maintain  all  these !"  The  burdens  remain 
to  this  day  unrelieved  and  if  there  is  any  difference  they  are  more 
onerous  in  many  cases. 

Feudal  dues  in  France  included  the  right  of  hunting,  of  fish- 
ing, of  river  crossing,  of  escorting  merchants  to  protect  their 
goods,  etc.  Vassals  paid  to  bake  bread  in  seignorial  ovens,  to 
grind  corn  in  seignorial  mills,  to  make  their  wine  in  seignorial 
wine  presses.  •  In  differences  of  agreement  the  case  was  decided 
by  a  duel  or  appeal  to  arms.  The  right  of  private  war  was  re- 
garded as  a  necessity.  All  lords  and  some  barons  made  judicial 
sentences  and  condemned  to  death.  Serfs  had  no  rights.  An 
old  legist  said  the  baron  might  take  from  the  serfs  all  they  had 
and  keep  them  in  prison  as  long  as  he  liked.  Michelet^  mentions 
the  fighting  qualities  of  the  church  dignitaries  who  rode  chargers, 
hunted  and  fought,  wielded  swords  and  battle  axes :  "We  hear 
of  a  bishop  being  deposed  by  the  whole  episcopal  bench  as  too 
pacific  and  not  courageous  enough."  Such  was  the  state  of 
things  when  Hughes  Capet  came  to  the  throne. 

Fellowship  of  suffering  knit  together  all  the  victims  of 
tyranny.  After  the  work  of  the  day  was  over  the  inhabitants  of 
the  same  neighborhood  used  to  assemble  and  discuss  the  long  tale 
of  their  grievances,  the  duties  they  had  to  pay,  the  corvees  to 
which  they  were  subjected,  labor  for  which  they  received  no 
compensation*^'.  William  of  Jumieges  gives  an  interesting  ac- 
count of  the  origin  and  development  of  a  vast  association 
throughout  the  length  and  breadth  of  the  duchy,  the  object  of 
which  was  the  destruction  of  the  feudal  system.     Unfortunately 

^  History  of  France,  Vol.  II. 
"  Masson,  Mediaeval  France. 


^8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  plot  was  discovered  and  the  members  were  frightfully  mal- 
treated. During  the  hundred  years  war  there  was  no  affliction 
that  did  not  fall  upon  France,  foreign  soldiery  chased  Frenchmen 
from  their  homes  and  a  cruel  nobility  and  clergy  lived  upon  them. 
In  the  days  of  Charles  VI  it  is  said  that  "the  nobles  were  like 
bears,  lions,  wolves  who  were  combined  to  fleece  the  cattle.  The 
peasantry  ass,  cow,  ox,  goat  came  in  turn  to  bend  the  knee  before 
the  wild  beasts  of  the  forests ;  the  sheep  ventured  timidly  to  say 
that  he  has  already  been  four  times  sheared,  quatre  fois  plumee. 
To  these  doleful  and  piteous  moanings  of  the  common  people  a 
concert  of  sharp  and  threatening  voices  answers :  Sa  de  I'ar- 
gent !,  Sa  de  I'argent ! ;  Money !,  Money  I.  Such  is  the  cry  which 
all  day  long  sounds  in  the  ear  of  the  famished  people." 

Pilgrimages  to  the  Holy  City  circulated  stories  of  the  wonder- 
ful relics  and  the  miracles  that  were  performed  there,  also  that 
Jews  and  Mohammedans  abused  the  Christians.  The  earliest  ap- 
peal to  arms  was  by  a  Frenchman,  Gerbert  of  Aurillac,  who  be- 
came pope  under  the  name  of  Sylvester  II,  in  1002,  and  through 
the  eloquence  of  a  fanatic,  Peter  the  Hermit,  a  native  of  Picardy, 
the  first  crusading  army  set  out.  In  1095  an  immense  concourse 
of  people  gathered  at  Clermont  and  in  their  midst  appeared  the 
wretched  looking  Peter,  small  with  bare  arms  and  feet,  his  dress 
a  woolen  tunic  and  a  cloak  of  coarse  cloth.  He  had  come  from 
Italy  where  he  had  persuaded  the  pope,  Urban  II,  to  summon  the 
people  to  arms  for  the  Christian  faith.  The  answer  to  his  dis- 
course was  unanimous  in  the  cry  ''Die  el  volt!,"  ''God  wills  it!" 
Thousands  fastened  to  their  garments  a  cross  cut  out  of  red 
cloth,  and  started  for  the  Holy  Land.  The  army  was  motley  and 
made  up  for  discipline  by  enthusiasm  and  simple  faith.  A  crazy 
■nobleman  from  Burgundy  calling  himself  Gautier  sans  avoir, 
Walter  the  Penniless,  led  with  15,000,  then  came  Peter  the  Her- 
mit at  the  head  of  a  hundred  thousand  pilgrims,  and  finally  a 
German  priest,  Gotteschalck,  with  15,000  more  in  the  rear.  The 
disorders  committed  by  that  rabble  were  so  great  that  the  inhab- 
itants of  the  countries  through  which  they  passed  rose  up  against 
them  and  slaughtered  them.  The  handful  reaching  the  shores  of 
Asia  Minor  fell  under  the  swords  of  Turks  in  the  plains  of 
Kicaea,  c.l\  but  i.ooo  men  and  Peter  the  Hermit. 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  79 

Later,  in  the  spring  of  1097,  six  hundred  thousand  foot  and 
a  hundred  thousand  cavalry  started  and  were  reduced  to  50,000 
by  plague,  famine  and  sickness.  They  deserted  in  such  numbers, 
also,  until  only  300  knights  remained,  and  fifty  years  passed  be- 
fore another  crusade  was  attempted.  The  most  absurd  expedi- 
tion being  that  under  the  boys  Stephen  and  Nicholas,  in  1212, 
when  50,000  children  were  sent  in  ships  to  capture  the  Holy 
Land  under  the  delusion  that  innocence  of  the  crusaders  would 
alone  secure  victory.  The  greater  part  of  this  helpless  army 
perished  miserably  by  sea  and  land ;  many  of  those  who  survived 
were  enslaved  by  their  captors. 

Boniface  VIII,  to  replenish  the  papal  coffers  and  pacify  the 
starving  Romans,  instituted  the  Festival  of  Jubilee  or  Holy  Year ' 
— a  revival  of  a  pagan  ceremonial.  A  plenary  indulgence  was 
offered  all  who  visited  St.  Peter  and  St.  Paul  churches  in  Rome. 
An  immense  concourse  of  pilgrims  frorn  all  parts  of  Christendom 
had  attested  the  wisdom  of  the  invention,  "and  two  priests  stood 
night  and  day  with  rakes  in  their  hands  to  collect  without  count- 
ing the  heaps  of  gold  and  silver  that  were  poured  on  the  altar  of 
St.  PauF." 

The  City  of  Rome  had  fallen  from  all  greatness  of  its  own 
when  it  came  to  be  dependent  on  the  fortunes  of  the  popes.  They 
took  to  Avignon  the  sustenance  of  the  city,  for  it  lived  on  the 
revenues  of  the  papacy,  and  knew  little  of  commerce  beyond  sell- 
ing indulgences,  absolutions,  benefices,  relics  and  papal  blessings. 
With  anarchy  were  the  contests  of  a  number  of  powerful  fam- 
ilies, the  Colonna,  the  Orsini  and  others,  always  at  strife  with  one 
another,  who  fought  out  their  feuds  in  the  streets  and  oppressed 
their  neighbors. 

Then  Cola  di  Rienzi,  last  of  the  Tribunes,  made  a  short-lived 
revolution  in  1347  by  appealing  to  the  people  to  re-establish  the 
ancient  republic.  His  head  was  turned  by  his  success,  and  in- 
flated with  conceit  and  vanity  he  became  despotic  and  was  driven 
out.  In  1354  he  came  back  as  senator  appointed  by  the  pope, 
who  thought  to  use  him,  but  his  influence  was  gone  and  he  was 

'  Gibbon,  Vol.  XII,  Ch.  59. 


8o  THE    EVOLUTION    0¥    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

slain  by  a  mob.  Lytton  claims  that  excommunication  turned  the 
people  against  him. 

The  Gabelle  or  infamous  government  tax  on  common  salt 
made  more  suffering  than  can  be  readily  conceived  in  this  age 
and  in  this  comparatively  free  country.  It  was  begun  by  Philip 
de  Valois,  king  of  France,  by  compelling  all  to  buy  salt  from  his 
storekeepers,  exclusively,  and  this  monopoly  became  one  of  the 
chief  sources  of  revenue  of  the  crown.  The  word  gabelle  is  old 
Teuton  allied  to  the  Anglo-Saxon  gafel  or  tax^.  Under  the  old 
regime  the  chief  method  of  taxing  was  known  as  the  taille  or 
personal  tax,  a  loose  and  dishonest  apportionment,  by  which  some 
escaped  taxing  while  others  were  overtaxed,  and  bribing,  with 
other  corrupt  means,  let  the  bulk  of  the  tax  fall  upon  the  peasants ; 
the  nobles,  clergy,  officials  and  some  professions  and  trades  were 
exempt,  only  laborers  and  peasants  were  subject  to  it,  and  the 
cost  was  so  great  that  in  Normandy  it  was  more  than  all  the  rest 
of  their  food,  the  duty  being  three  thousand  per  cent  in  some 
provinces  on  every  article  of  necessitv  unless  influential  enough 
to  escape  the  imposition.  Salt  was  ten  sous  per  pound,  thirty 
times  its  present  price. 

Where  places  were  brave  and  strong  enough  to  defy  the  cow- 
ardly and  rapacious  government  they  were  let  alone;  Brittany, 
Guienne,  Poitou  and  several  other  provinces  were  wholly  exempt 
or  paid  a  trifling  bribe,  the  rumor  that  the  gabelle  was  to  be  im- 
posed there  was  enough  to  excite  an  insurrection.  Where  people 
are  too  stupid  or  helpless  to  protect  themselves,  the  world  over, 
they  will  be  robbed  by  the  nearest  scoundrels,  and  that  is  why 
politicians  in  charge  of  insane  asylums  sometimes  steal  the  food 
from  patients,  and  "respectable"  merchants  instruct  the  politicians 
how  to  rob  if  allowed  to  divide  the  plunder. 

The  amount  of  salt  a  family  should  consume  was  dictated  by 
the  government;  it  would  usually  cost  eighteen  dollars  a  year  to 
provide  salt  for  a  family  of  six,  and  it  had  to  be  paid  whether  the 
salt  was  used  or  not®.  Every  human  being  above  seven  years  of 
age  was  bound  to  consume  seven  pounds  of  salt  yearly,  which 

'  T.  Wright,  History  of  France,  Vol.  I,  p.  364- 

•  J.  B.  Perkins,  France  Under  Mazarin,  Vol.  II,  Ch.  18. 


THE    MJDDLE    AGES.  8l 

must  be  used  exclusively  with  food  or  in  cooking.  Severe  pen- 
alties were  consequent  upon  salting  rrieat,  butter  or  cheese  in  ad- 
vance of  their  use.  A  fine  of  $400  was  enforced  for  buying  else- 
where than  from  the  government  agent,  and  smugglers  of  salt 
were  punished  by  imprisonment,  the  galleys  and  death;  $250 
was  the  fine  for  taking  a  beast  to  a  salt  marsh  to  allow  it  to  drink 
sea  water;  salted  hams  and  bacon  were  not  permitted  to  enter 
the  country;  the  salt  used  by  the  fisheries  was  supervised  and 
guarded  by  such  vexatious  regulations  as  to  block  commerce. 
The  taille  was  said  to  be  even  worse  than  the  gabelle,  for  in  the 
parishes  was  set  in  motion  a  system  of  blind,  stupid,  remorseless 
extortion  of  which  one  cannot  read  now  without  indignation. 
Partiality  and  inequalities  of  taxation  were  bad  enough,  but  the 
chief  inhabitants  of  the  country  villages  were  compelled  to  fill 
in  rotation  the  odious  office  of  collectors.  They  were  made  re- 
sponsible for  the  gross  amount  to  be  levied  which  they  might  get 
as  they  could  out  of  their  parishioners.  Friends  or  persons  who 
had  powerful  patrons,  pull,  in  American  slang,  were  exempted, 
while  enemies  or  the  unprotected  were  drained  of  their  last  farth- 
ing. The  collectors,  we  are  told,  went  about,  always  keeping 
well  together  for  fear  of  violence,  making  their  visits  and  assess- 
ments, meeting  everywhere  a  chorus  of  imprecations.  As  the 
taille  was  always  in  arrears,  on  one  side  of  the  street  might  be 
seen  the  collectors  of  the  present  year  pursuing  their  exactions, 
while  on  the  other  side  of  the  street  were  those  previously  en- 
gaged on  the  same  business  trying  to  collect  balances  due  for  past 
years,  and  farther  on  were  the  agents  of  the  gabelle  employed  in 
a  similar  manner.  From  morning  to  evening,  from  year's  begin- 
ning to  its  ending,  they  tramped,  escorted  by  volleys  of  oaths 
and  curses,  getting  a  penny  here  and  a  penny  there,  for  prompt 
payment  under  this  marvelous  system  was  not  to  be  thought  of^^. 
Spies  were  multiplied  and  illicit  trade  sprang  up  through  smug- 
gling salt  from  the  districts  where  the  price  was  less  to  where  it 
was  greater,  and  when  the  religious  and  military  taxes  had  taken 
all   the   farmers  owned  they  became  smugglers.     For  the  first 

^"J.   C.   Morison,  The  Reign  of  Louis  XIV.,  Fortnightly  Review,  April, 
1874.  Vol.  XXL 


82  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

offense  against  the  salt  laws  there  were  heavy  fines,  the  galleys 
for  the  second  violation,  and  hanging  for  the  third.  There  were 
3,500  imprisoned  and  500  executed  each  year  for  "false  trade" 
of  this  kind.  An  army  of  soldiers  watched  the  peasants  and 
made  it  the  means  of  persecution;  inspecting  pots  and  pans  and 
comparing  what  salt  was  found  with  the  written  permission  to 
use  it.  Whether  they  had  much  or  little  salt  it  could  be  construed 
as  evidence  of  dealing  with  smugglers,  and  arrests  followed. 
Finally  the  government  forced  the  peasants  to  use  a  certain  quan- 
tity of  salt,  whether  they  wanted  to  do  so  or  not,  or  they  would 
be  accused  of  "false  trade."^^ 

The  fall  of  France  and  Feudalism  at  Crecy,  in  1347,  was 
through  the  unexpected  superiority  of  the  unmounted  common 
people  to  the  mounted  knighthood^-.  The  foolish  peasants  at 
last  realized  their  strength  and  feudalism  tottered  thenceforth 
to  its  fall,  and  in  1360  parliament  began  to  legislate  for  the  people 
instead  of  against  them.  In  commercial  unions  tradesmen  and 
merchants  began  to  form  associations  not  only  in  cities  but  be- 
tween them.  The  league  of  the  Rhine  embraced  sixty  cities  in 
the  thirteenth  century  and  later  the  Swabian  and  Hanseatic 
leagues  were  still  more  extensive.  The  monarchs  recognized  in 
the  cities  their  best  allies  against  feudalism  and  availed  them- 
selves of  this  chance  to  grab  away  the  power  the  feudal  lords 
grabbed  from  the  people  without  sufficiently  recognizing  their 
sovereign's  right  to  share  in  the  grabs,  so  while  the  kings  did 
not  like  the  presumption  of  the  cities  in  asserting  their  freedom, 
these  divinely  anointed  grabbers  gladly  used  the  cities  to  fight 
for  a  regular  system  of  taxation  rather  than  the  irregular  one  of 
feudal  misgovernment.  New  nations  began  to  arise  in  Europe, 
the  days  of  anarchy  and  isolation  were  coming  to  an  end,  and, 
created  by  the  crusades,  the  revival  of  learning,  the  spread  of 
commerce  and  other  forces,  general  sentiments  spread  enough 
to  centralize  and  unite  people  in  a  common  organization.  The 
fourth  crusade  founded  the  Latin  empire  of  the  east  on  the  ruins 
of  the  Greek  empire.    The  people  and  many  of  the  clergy  began 

"  Petite  histoire  du  people  francais,  Paul  Lacombe. 
"  Green's  History  of  English  People,  p.  285. 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  83 

to  Oppose  the  pretensions  of  the  papal  power ;  rival  popes  at  Rome 
and  Avignon  finally  cursed  each  other,  and  in  1414  the  council 
of  Constance  was  to  determine  between  the  claims  of  three  popes. 
A  century  later  the  scattered  forces  of  reform  gathered.  The 
invention  of  the  printing  press  helped  Luther  to  succeed  where 
all  others  had  failed  and  he  sowed  Europe  with  his  fiery  pam- 
phlets. 

Soon  thereafter  the  Elizabethan  age  with  its  Shakespeare  and 
other  intellects,  through  the  recent  art  of  printing,  enjoyed  fruit- 
ful fields  of  labor  by  which  better  ideas  were  spread. 

"For  many  years  past  the  great  danger  to  the  balance  of 
power  appeared  to  come  from  the  regular  clergy  who,  favored 
by  the  success  of  the  mendicant  orders,  were  adding  house  to 
house  and  field  to  field.  Never  dying  out,  like  families,  and  rare- 
ly losing  by  forfeitures,  the  monasteries  might  well  nigh  calculate 
the  time  when  all  the  soil  of  England  should  be  their  own."^" 

The  clergy  schemed  to  get  more  land,  but  parliament  with- 
the  people  stayed  their  hand  in  1279. 

The  Swiss  Confederacy  arose  through  a  league  of  three  can- 
tons in  1 29 1,  being  called  upon  to  stand  together  in  resistance  to 
Austria.  In  13 15  Leopold,  Duke  of  Austria,  invaded  the  Switz- 
erland forest  cantons  and  was  defeated,  whereupon  neighboring 
cantons  and  cities  joined  the  league.  The  Confederacy  has  ex- 
isted to  this  day,  showing  what  intelligent  unison  will  accom- 
plish against  tyranny. 

In  England  the  alliance  was  nobles  and  people  against  the 
king,  instead  of  king  and  nobles  against  the  people,  as  on  the 
continent.  This  is  illustrated  in  121 5  by  Magna  Charta  being 
wrenched  from  King  John,  the  first  document  of  the  English 
constitution  in  which  privileges  and  rights  are  won  for  noble 
and  commoner  alike.  And  the  first  parliament  in  which  citizens 
sat  as  representatives  was  in  December,  1264,  called  by  a  chief 
of  the  insurgent  nobles.  The  grab  game  took  a  new  shape  in 
England  with  different  partners  and  results  from  those  of  Eu- 
rope generally. 

Magna  Charta  analyzed  shows  that  previously  under  John 

"  C.  H.  Pearson,  History  of  England  During  Earlv  and  Middle  Ages,  Vol. 
II,  Ch.  9. 


84  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  church  rights  were  insecure,  the  barons  were  oppressed  and 
in  turn  they  oppressed  the  people,  Hberty  was  guaranteed  no- 
where, foreign  merchants  were  molested,  people  were  imprisoned 
without  fair  trial  and  justice  was  often  delayed,  sold  or  denied. 

Martin  Luther  fought  the  rascalities  of  his  former  church 
from  outside  of  it,  after  he  had  founded  his  own  religion,  but  a 
greater  reformer,  Savonarola,  thundered  effectively  against  the 
rottenness  introduced  into  Catholicism  by  priestly  knaves  while 
he  remained  still  an  officiating  sermonizer  in  the  church  till  as- 
sassinated by  those  with  whose  vested  interests  he  interfered. 
Erasmus,  about  15 17,  published  his  Adages,  in  which  he  reflects 
with  bitterness  upon  kings  and  priests.  "It  is  the  aim  of  the 
guardians  of  a  prince,"  he  exclaims,  "that  he  never  may  become  a 
man.  The  nobility  who  fatten  on  public  calamity,  endeavor  to 
plunge  him  into  pleasures  that  he  may  never  learn  his  duty. 
Towns  are  burned,  lands  are  wasted,  temples  are  plundered,  in- 
nocent citizens  are  slaughtered,  while  the  prince  is  playing  at 
dice,  dancing  or  amusing  himself  with  puppets,  hunting  or  drink- 
ing."^* Popular  opinion  was  educated  by  Luther  in  15 17  until 
in  1 518  it  fully  supported  his  views  that  the  pope  did  wrong  in 
granting  permission  to  commit  crime  by  accepting  pay  for  the 
indulgence,  and  that  the  pope  had  no  power  over  souls  in  purga- 
tory. The  most  striking  effect  of  the  first  preaching  of  the  refor- 
mation was  that  it  appealed  to  the  ignorant,  and  though  political 
liberty  in  the  sense  we  use  the  word  cannot  be  reckoned  the  aim 
of  those  who  introduced  it,  yet  there  predominated  the  revolu- 
tionary spirit  which  loves  to  witness  destruction  for  its  own  sake, 
and  that  intoxicated  self-confidence  which  renders  full  mischief. ^^ 

In  the  regency  period  of  France  wild  schemes  to  better 
finances  were  plentiful.  Louis  XIV.  had  degraded  everything. 
His  profuseness  and  corruption  were  copied  by  every  function- 
ary from  high  to  low.  The  national  debt  was  overwhelming. 
The  coins  were  debased  to  four-fifths  of  their  metal  weight.  The 
Bastille  could  not  contain  the  tax  evaders.  Then  John  Law  arose 
with  his  Mississippi  plan  and  robbed  France  as  the  Panama  canal 
construction  did  later. 

"  Hallam,  Literature  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages,  Ch.  IV,  Sec.  41. 
»  Hallam,  Op.  Cit.,  Ch.  VI,  Sec.  12. 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES. 


85 


Similar  financial  excitements  attended  by  great  losses  wefe 
what  was  known  as  the  South  Sea  Bubble.  The  Tulip  mania  was 
about  as  visionary  as  the  notion  of  the  alchemists  that  common 
metals  could  be  turned  into  gold  or  that  the  elixir  of  life  could 
be  fabricated  chemically.  Ponce  de  Leon  roamed  through  the 
swamps  of  Florida  looking  for  a  fountain  of  youth  and  Coronado 
marched  through  western  North  America  in  search  of  the  seven 
fabulous  cities  of  Cibola,  which  were  reputed  as  built  of  solid 
gold. 

Characteristic  of  the  methods  of  the  latter  part  of  the  middle 
ages  was  the  behavior  of  Richard  III.  in  imprisoning  and  mur- 
dering his  nephews,  Edward  and  Richard,  to  enable  him  to  suc- 
ceed to  his  brother,  Edward  V.,  in  1483.  In  15 17  Dietzel  or  Tet- 
zel,  a  prior  of  the  Dominicans  and  papal  representative,  sold  in- 
dulgences, furnishing  official  letters  with  seals  "by  which  even 
the  sins  that  you  may  have  a  wish  to  commit  hereafter  shall  be 
all  forgiven  you."  Repentence  was  not  necessary,  but  the  money 
was  to  be  brought  quickly.  ''The  very  instant  the  money  rattles 
at  the  bottom  of  the  strong  box  dead  souls  of  your  friends  are 
released  from  purgatory  and  fly  to  heaven."  Tetzel  in  Germany 
and  Samson  in  Switzerland  had  a  special  scale  of  prices  adjusted 
to  the  rank  of  the  sinner  and  kind  of  sin  he  wished  to  commit. ^^ 

Francis  of  Waldeck  wanted  to  make  Lutheranism  a  private 
affair  for  the  profit  of  his  own  family.  The  Anabaptists  of 
Miinster  stood  a  seige  of  sixteen  months,  beginning  in  1534, 
lieaded  by  a  crazy  tailor,  John  Bockolson,  "John  of  Leyden,"  with 
John  Matthesen  and  Knipperdolling.  Foolishness  ran  riot,  vis- 
ions and  revelations  became  common,  such  as  enabled  John  of 
Leyden  to  have  sixteen  wives. 

Later  still,  in  1562  to  1596,  religious  wars  were  fomented  in 
France  by  the  meddling  of  Philip  II.  of  Spain.  The  reactionary 
wars  of  religion  in  Germany  followed  half  a  century  later. 

This  Philip  condemned  millions  of  men,  women  and  children 
in  the  Netherlands  to  be  burned  alive,  buried  alive  and  otherwise 
disposed  of  to  suit  his  ideas  of  what  would  please  God  and  Spain. 
Some  of  Wiclif's  English  ideas  were  carried  into  Bohemia  and 

^''' J.  N.  Merle  D'Aubigne,  The  Story  of  the  Reformation,  Part  i,  Ch.  6. 


86  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

in  the  early  part  of  the  fifteenth  century  John  Hus,  a  monk,  began 
his  reform  movement.  He  reproved  the  people  for  their  sins  un- 
disturbed, but  when  he  accused  the  clergy  and  monks  of  covet- 
ousness,  ambition,  sloth  and  other  vices,  they  turned  on  him. 
Hus  finally  denounced  indulgences  and  thus  wounded  Rome  in 
her  pocket  and  he  was  excommunicated  and  imprisoned.  The 
Hussites  asked  that  the  Bible  be  freely  preached,  that  the  sacra- 
ment be  given  in  both  forms,  that  the  clergy  be  deprived  of  prop- 
erty and  terriporal  power,  that  all  sins  were  to  be  punished  by  the 
proper  authorities.  Wholesale  murders,  battles  and  a  seven  weeks' 
convention  that  came  to  nothing  followed,  with  Bohemia  and 
Germany  being  drowned  in  blood  for  thirty  years. 

The  institution  of  ''Chivalry"  should  be  mentioned  as  amount- 
ing to  instruction  from  childhood  in  hysterical  exploits,  about 
such  as  Cervantes  describes  in  Don  Quijote  de  la  Mancha.  It 
however,  served  to  mitigate  much  brutaHcy  of  the  period. 

A  study  of  Joan  of  Arc  should  afford  ideas  of  the  conditions 
and  people  among  whom  she  figured. 

She  was  born  in  141 2  a  simple  country  girl  whose  relatives, 
neighbors  and  surroundings  were  full  of  fairy  stories  of  the  ex- 
ploits of  saints  and  knights,  and  she  evidently  had  inherited  an 
unstable  nervous  system,  which  at  times  enabled  her  to  see  things 
others  could  not  see,  in  insane  asylum  parlance :  hallucinations. 
She  also  heard  voices  others  could  not  hear,  and  these  are  not 
only  similarly  classified,  but  are  regarded  as  a  symptom  of  in- 
sanity liable  to  cause  all  sorts  of  uncomfortable,  usually  aggress- 
ive, acts.  Ordinarily,  poor  Jeanne  d'Arc  would  have  passed  for 
a  commonplace,  good  little  girl,  somewhat  queer,  but  the  times 
gave  direction  and  opportunity  to  her  vagaries  as  they  did  to 
Walter  the  Witless,  Peter  the  Dotty,  Simon  the  Jumping  Jack,, 
and  numbers  of  other  funny  folks,  who  today  would  be  on  pool 
farms,  kicked  about  by  saloon-keeping  ward  politicians,  with  no 
reverence  for  anything  but  boodle. 

At  thirteen  she  saw  a  brilliant  light  in  the  direction  of  the 
church  and  a  voice  said  to  her :  "Jeanne  be  a  good  and  kind 
child ;  go  often  to  church."  That  is  just  such  an  hallucination  as 
could  be  compounded  from  the  advice  a  child  of  the  time  would 
constantly  hear  from  priests,  parents  and  friends,  but  when  she 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  87 

heard  incessant  talk  about  the  war,  the  claims  of  Charles  VII., 
and  very  little  else,  she  fancied  that  St.  Michael,  St.  Margaret  and 
St.  Catherine  conversed  familiarly  with  her,  pretty  much  as  our 
little  ones  nowadays  tell  us  of  the  talks  they  have  with  Santa 
Claus  and  the  things  he  promised  to  bring  them.  There  were  mil- 
lions of  angels  in  Jeanne's  dream,  as  the  baby  sees  reindeer  and 
toys  in  his  vision.  And  for  the  same  reason,  because  people  were 
always  talking  of  such  things  in  the  presence  of  children ;  in  the 
middle  ages  the  chat  was  of  saints,  martyrs  and  dragons  and  sim- 
ilarly wonderful  matters,  with  lots  of  good  people  swearing  to 
having  seen  witches  riding  broomsticks  through  the  air.  Finally 
St.  Michael  told  her  to  go  to  the  assistance  of  the  king  of  France 
and  restore  him  to  his  kingdom.  She  had  a  lucid  moment  in 
which  she  answered :  "My  lord,  I  am  only  a  poor  girl  and  I  could 
neither  ride  nor  take  the  command  of  men-at-arms."  The  voice 
continued :  ''You  must  go  to  Maistre  Robert  de  Baudricourt, 
captain  of  Vaucouleurs,  and  he  will  have  you  taken  to  the  king; 
St.  Margaret  and  St.  Catherine  will  come  to  your  assistance." 
Here  again  the  real  and  unreal  people,  captains  and  saints,  of 
whom  she  incessantly  heard,  played  their  parts  in  her  day  dreams ; 
it  is  not  necessary  to  think  she  was  lying,  youngsters  will  nar- 
rate with  every  appearance  of  truth  the  most  preposterous  cock- 
and-bull  stories,  and  it  is  hard  to  tell  whether  they  dreamed  or  in- 
vented the  whole  matter. 

Her  father  declared  that  she  was  out  of  her  senses,  but  an 
uncle  took  her  to  Baudricourt  and  the  clergy  made  fun  of  her,  as 
they  had  a  monopoly  of  the  miracle  business  and  wanted  no  fresh 
humbug  to  cuit  into  their  profits.  Such  stories  as  her  recogniz- 
ing the  king  in  spite  of  his  disguise  is  just  such  trivial  stuff  as 
would  be  tacked  on  to  ''history"  by  miracle  loving  people,  with 
lots  of  equally  reliable  comedy  capering. 

The  state  of  France,  at  the  time  of  the  hundred  years'  war 
in  the  fourteenth  and  fifteenth  centuries,  was  one  of  measure- 
less misery.  It  was  full  of  free-booters  who  were  discharged 
soldiers,  desperate,  homeless  and  idle  men,  and  the  ruffians  who 
always  bestir  themselves  when  authority  disappears.  They 
roamed  the  country  in  bands,  large  and  small,  stripped  it  of  what 
w^ar  had  spared  and  left  famine  behind  them. 


88  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Charles  VI.  was  an  epileptic  boy  of  12  years  with  three  greedy 
uncles  to  quarrel  over  him  and  plunder  the  territory  in  his  name. 
One  uncle  was  the  Duke  of  Burgundy. 

The  fact  is  that  France  had  been  overrun  by  enemies  during 
her  hundred  years'  war,  until  it  was  said  that  Englishmen  had 
not  seen  a  Frenchman's  face  for  years,  as  Frenchmen  showed 
only  their  backs.  Certainly  there  was  great  discouragement,  and 
evidently  with  little  reason,  for  at  Orleans  the  English  served 
their  guns  badly,  but  the  French  were  equally  inefficient  until 
Jeanne  appeared  to  cheer  them  up  with  expectation  of  miraculous 
intervention,  firing  them  with  bigoted  devotion  as  the  stories  of 
what  wonderful  things  she  could  do  were  camp-fire  talk  until 
they  got  up  an  artificial  courage  and  actually  fought  instead  of 
ran. 

Her  grateful  king  and  country  sold  her  to  the  English  for 
10,000  livres  and  a  judge  was  appointed  to  try  her  for  witchcraft, 
being  in  league  with  the  devil,  etc.  The  duke  of  Burgundy  prom- 
ised this  judge,  Pierre  Cauchon,  to  make  him  a  bishop  if  he  con- 
demned Jeanne,  and  the  reverend  politician  resorted  to  all  the 
tricks  you  can  see  in  an  occasional  modern  judge  who  has  been 
bought  up  to  terrify,  thwart,  belittle  and  defeat  a  helpless  sup- 
pliant, dependent  upon  his  mercy. 

In  May,  143 1,  she  was  burned  alive  as  a  sorceress,  after  a 
mock  trial  in  which  evidence  was  suppressed  and  there  were  per- 
jured witnesses  and  ignoring  of  her  right  of  appeal  to  the  pope; 
she  was  so  ignorant  that  she  did  not  know  she  had  such  a  right 
and  no  one  told  her,  not  even  St.  Michael.  When  she  was  safely 
dead  it  struck  the  tardy  intellects  of  the  anthropoids  that  as  the 
church  repudiated  her  through  the  trial  and  condemnation  her 
success  in  placing  Charles  securely  in  his  job  of  living  on  the 
labor  of  hard-working  clod-hoppers  must  have  been  through  the 
aid  of  her  friend,  the  devil,  so  twenty-four  years  after  her  being 
burned,  Charles  asked  Pope  Calixtus  to  have  the  trial  revised, 
and  on  July  7,  1456,  the  rehabilitation  of  the  Maid  of  Orleans 
was  proclaimed  and  for  four  hundred  years  the  people  of  France 
thought  her  good  enough  to  make  a  saint  of  and  many  intimations 
came  from  Rome  that  she  was  about  to  be  promoted  in  heaven, 
but  the  desire  was  juggled  with,  as  Rome  wanted  to  see  what 


THE    MIDDLE    AGES.  89 

there  was  in  it  for  her,  as  poHticians  remark,  and  the  French 
government  awoke  to  the  observation  that  priestly  and  church 
sisterhood  schools,  while  well  enough  meant  as  a  rule,  taught 
the  children  to  be  good  little  dolts  and  monkeys  and  not  to  dare 
to  think  except  as  the  church  dictated  even  where  their  country 
was  concerned,  whereupon,  the  government  ended  that  sort  of 
schooling  and  Rome  retaliates  like  a  child,  refused  a  bite  of  apple, 
practically  saying,  well,  you  can  go  to  blazes  with  your  old  Joan 
of  Arc,  she  was  a  fraud  after  all.  At  least  that  meaning  can  be 
given  to  the  following  news  from  Paris,  August  2,  1902 : 

France  is  much  disturbed  by  the  news  from  Rome  that  the 
Sacred  College  of  Cardinals  definitely  refuses  to  canonize  Joan 
of  Arc. 

The  decision,  coming  after  several  favorable  opinions  had 
been  issued  and  committees  had  been  appointed  to  examine  into 
the  heroine's  claims  to  beatification,  is  construed  as  a  retaliation 
for  the  expulsion  of  the  religious  orders  from  France. 

The  Sacred  College  mentions  five  reasons  to  justify  refusal! 

First,  that  Joan  of  Arc  culpably  attacked  Paris  on  a  religious 
fete  day,  while  the  city  was  celebrating  the  birth  of  the  mother  of 
Jesus. 

Second,  her  capture  disproved  her  claim  of  having  a  heaven- 
ordered  mission. 

Third,  her  attempted  evasion  shows  that  martyrdom  was  suf- 
fered unwillingly. 

Fourth,  that  she  lacked  heroism  when  she  signed  an  abjura- 
tion of  alleged  errors. 

Fifth,  according  to  her  own  admissions,  it  is  doubtful  whether 
she  died  a  virgin. 

The  French  people  are  deeply  grieved  at  the  decision,  and  the 
last  reason  makes  even  non-believers  indignant,  as  they  regard 
it  as  a  wicked  insinuation. 


CHAPTER  V. 
EVOLUTION. 

The  evolutionary  doctrine  not  only  refers  to  the  life-history 
of  mankind,  animals  and  plants,  but  the  processes  by  which  the 
universe  was  constructed  and  is  passing  on  to  its  dissolution. 

Man  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  universe,  and  as  he  proceeded 
from  and  was  created  by  the  workings  of  the  laws  of  the  universe 
and  is  made  from  the  same  elements  you  find  in  .rocks,  metals, 
trees,  seas,  clouds,  suns,  and  stars,  and  as  man  exists  because  the 
universe  exists,  to  study  him  aright  we  must  survey  him  as  he 
aggregates  in  families,  tribes  and  nations,  in  his  relations  with, 
resemblances  to,  and  differences  from  the  animals  with  which  he 
is  associated. 

The  more  exact  our  knowledge  becomes,  the  deeper  we  study 
into  the  nature  of  all  things,  the  more  consistent  we  will  find  the 
explanations  afforded  by  evolutionism  and  we  are  lifted  above  the 
childish  views  of  things  the  less  informed  entertain,  and  are  freed 
from  their  superstitions  and  liability  to  misdirection  of  energies. 

The  popular  notion  of  the  doctrine  of  descent  is  that  evolu- 
tionists claim  that  man  came  from  an  ancestral  monkey,  which 
is  about  as  inaccurate  as  are  most  current  opinions  upon  scientific 
subjects.  One  of  the  stock  refutations  of  the  unscientific  is  to 
call  attention  to  certain  educational  lights,  having  refused  to  ac- 
cept the  Darwinian  philosophy.  We  may  find  honest  as  well  as 
dishonest  differences  of  opinion  arising  everywhere ;  in  law,  med- 
icine, theology,  politics  and  in  our  very  homes,  over  what  appears 
to  you  to  be  the  most  undebatable  subject.  Every  new  idea  has 
been  fought  at  the  outset.  Lactantius  and  Eusebius  denied  that 
the  earth  was  round,  while  Basil  and  Ambrose  talked  of  the  possi- 
bility of  anyone  escaping  eternal  torments  who  believed  that  sort 
of  nonsense.  Cosmos'  assertion  of  the  flatness  of  the  world  was 
not  denied  for  six  hundred  years,  and  then  d'Ascoli  paid  with  his 

90 


EVOLUTION. 


91 


life  for  proclaiming  his  doubt.  The  Newtonian  and  Copernican 
theories  were  ridiculed  by  Luther  and  Melancthon.  The  life  of 
Descartes  was  sought  by  his  confreres  for  stating  truths  that  are 
taught  in  our  schools  today. 

The  bright  side  of  evolutionism  appears  in  recognizing  that 
man  can  go  on  improving  indefinitely  and  rise  immeasurably 
above  his  present  condition.  Lives  of  devotion  to  principle  will 
come  to  be  considered  worthy  of  emulation  rather  than  the  wolfish 
scramble  for  money  from  juvenility  to  the  grave.  The  penniless 
missionary  who  threw  his  life  away  in  trying  to  elevate  some 
wretched  race  will  be  appreciated  as  superior  to  the  sleek  lux- 
uriating fashionable  dealer  in  platitudes  who  gives  his  hearers 
"what  they  think  they  want"  to  enable  him  to  hold  his  place. 
Many  parts  of  the  world  grow  better,  because  they  evolve.  The 
evolutionary  theory,  therefore,  gives  us  more  hope  for  the  future 
than  is  derivable  from  any  other  source. 

After  all  what  does  acceptance  of  a  theory  by  the  public 
amount  to  as  evidence  of  its  validity?  The  majority  today  does 
not  deny  that  the  earth  is  round,  but  gives  you  no  reason  for  it 
other  than  that  it  is  generally  accepted  as  true.  They  laugh  at 
the  negro  preacher  Jasper  for  claiming  that  ''the  sun  do  move,'' 
yet  he  is  more  logical,  even  though  equally  ignorant,  for  he  cites 
his  authority.  It  is  growing  customary  to  accept  the  evolutionary 
theory,  not  because  it  is  any  better  understood  by  people  at  large^ 
but  because  opposition  to  it  is  antiquated.  "Beliefs"  are  put  away 
like  hoop  skirts,  ear-rings  and  frilled  shirts. 

In  1885  a  man  in  London  wagered  several  thousand  pounds 
that  the  world  was  flat  and  appealed  to  the  law  against  the  de- 
cision of  his  referees;  the  next  year  another  in  Washington  of- 
fered $10,000  for  proofs  that  would  convince  him  that  the  earth 
was  a  sphere.  It  would  probably  be  as  easy  to  convince  the 
average  politician  that  honesty  is  the  best  policy. 

Referring  again  to  the  opposition  to  new  and  valuable  ideas, 
the  discoverer  of  oxygen,  Priestley,  was  refused  an  appointment 
in  a  scientific  expedition  owing  to  his  advanced  views  in  1772. 
Alexander  von  Humboldt's  researches  were  snubbed  and  opposed 
by  many  who  should  have  known  better.  Roger  Bacon,  whose 
chemical  knowledge  was  three  hundred  years  ahead  of  his  time. 


92 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


was  persecuted  by  the  pundits  of  Oxford.  When  anatomy  was 
made  a  science  by  Vesalius  he  was  hounded  to  death  by  the  dis- 
ciples of  the  old  medical  school  of  Galen.  Preventive  measures 
against  pestilence,  such  as  were  afforded  by  vaccination,  quaran- 
tine, etc.,  met  with  violent  hindrances.  Chloroform  as  an  anaes- 
thetic was  at  first  condemned  by  clergymen  and  physicians  as  an 
impious  interference  with  God's  intention  that  men  should  suffer. 
Buffon's  simple  geological  truths  were  derided  and  Cuvier 
truckled  to  his  imperial  master  in  doing  all  he  could  against  the 
genius  Lamarck,  whose  studies  of  animal  development  made  a 
revolution  in  zoology. 

Men  naturally  regard  themselves  as  the  most  important  things 
on  earth  and  imagine  that  the  universe  was  made  for  them  alone, 
that  plants  and  animals,  suns,  moons,  and  stars,  seas  and  lands 
were  made  for  their  convenience,  whereas  man  is  a  comparatively 
insignificant  animal  with  feeble  muscular  power ;  many  of  his 
senses  are  poorly  developed,  when  we  consider  the  sight  of  the 
eagle  and  smelling  sense  of  the  hound.  The  intelligence  of  man, 
in  the  long  run,  enables  him  to  triumph  over  hostile  influences  in 
nature  which  in  individual  cases  are  terribly  destructive.  That  is, 
man  survives  through  advantages  he  enjoys,  in  spite  of  multitudes 
who  are  overcome  in  the  battle  of  life. 

The  Mediterranean  sea  was  popularly  regarded  as  the  center 
of  the  Earth's  surface,  but  doubts  on  this  point  accumulated  as 
more  lands  were  discovered.  Of  course  the  earth  itself  was  sup- 
posed to  be  the  most  important  part  of  creation  and  it  was  thought 
that  suns,  moons,  and  stars  were  small  in  comparison,  and  merely 
revolved  about  us  to  give  us  light.  It  was  a  great  shock  to  learn 
that  the  earth  moved  round  the  sun,  which  was  much  larger  than 
the  world  we  live  in.  Such  new  ideas  were  regarded  as  liable  to 
upset  the  powers  of  a  set  of  rulers  who  claimed  divine  knowledge 
on  these  points,  so  it  was  considered  best  to  try  to  kill  off  the  new 
notion  even  if  necessary  to  destroy  those  who  advance  such  ideas. 
We  complacently  reconciled  ourselves  to  the  new  place  assigned 
us  by  science,  but  were  jostled  again  when  our  sun  was  found  to 
be  a  mere  speck  in  the  universe  of  stars,  many  of  which  were 
larger  than  our  whole  system  of  sun,  moon,  and  planets  put  to- 
gether. 


EVOLUTION. 


93 


Picture  our  earth  blazing  as  a  star  for  millions  of  years ;  the 
iron  and  minerals  existing  in  a  state  of  gas,  and,  finally,  as  heat 
enough  had  been  given  off,  patches  of  liquid  and  solid  substances 
began  to  accumulate  until  a  crust  was  formed,  which  was  inces- 
santly being  torn  by  enormous  volleys  of  melted  masses  thrown 
up  from  below.  Watery  vapor  condensed  into  hot  seas,  after 
awhile,  to  be  often  tossed  aloft  as  steam  again.  Hot  rains  fell 
upon  the  shrinking,  wrinkling,  folding  heaving  surface,  as  solid- 
ification went  on.  Dislocation  threw  up  mountains  and  the  crust 
thickened  till  at  the  present  day  it  is  about  fifty  miles  deep.  This 
on  the  scale  of  a  ball  eight  inches  in  diameter  would  afford  one- 
twentieth  of  an  inch  of  solid  crust,  or  about  the  thickness  of  wrap- 
ping paper,  while  all  the  rest  may  be  fire  and  melted  materials. 

As  to  when  the  evolutionary  idea  began  we  would  have  to  go 
back  to  Aristotle,  who  hinted  at  a  relationship  between  the  lowest 
plant  and  the  highest  animal  on  account  of  certain  matters  in 
common  between  them;  then  Bonnet  and  Lamarck  thought  ani- 
mals were  developed  from  lower  into  higher  forms  and  von  Baer 
pointed  out  the  remarkable  similarity  of  the  unborn  young  of 
higher  to  those  of  the  lower  animals,  such  as  fishes  and  lizards, 
and  asks :  "Why  should  a  dog  begin  like  a  fish,  a  lizard,  and  a 
bird?" 

Robt.  Chambers^  advanced  the  hypothesis  applicable  to  all 
similar  theaters  of  vital  being  that  the  simplest  and  most  primitive 
type  under  a  law  to  which  that  of  like  production  is  subordinate, 
gave  birth  to  the  type  next  above  it,  that  this  again  produced  the 
next  higher,  and  so  on  to  the  very  highest,  the  stages  of  advance 
being  in  all  cases  very  small,  namely  from  one  species  to  another. 

Geologists  found  that  the  lower  down  they  dig  into  the  earth 
the  simpler  become  the  animal  forms,  so  that  in  the  oldest  rocks 
we  find  no  monkeys  or  four-footed  animals,  no  lizards  or  frogs, 
but  only  shells  of  sea  animals  and  a  few  bones  of  fishes  of  kinds 
different  from  those  now  living.  Evolution  is  proceeding  daily, 
hourly,  all  about  us.  The  child  evolves  into  the  grown  person, 
the  kitten  into  a  cat,  the  puppy  into  doghood,  the  calf  into  the  ox 
or  cow,  the  lamb  into  the  sheep,  the  seed  into  the  tree,  villages  into 
towns  and  towns  into  cities,  families  into  tribes,  and  tribes  into 

'  Vestiges  of  the  Natural  History  of  Creation,  1844. 


94  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

nations,  savage  people  into  civilized  people  and  so  on. 

The  change  of  gases  to  liquids  and  solids  are  every-day  events, 
the  formation  of  crystals  are  also  familiar  to  us,  but,  while  plants 
and  animals  are  made  up  of  the  very  same  things  of  which  we  are 
speaking:  carbon  that  forms  coal  and  diamonds,  nitrogen  and 
ogygen,  that  we  breathe  in  the  air,  and  hydrogen,  which,  with  the 
oxygen,  constitutes  water,  there  is  evidently  something  that  binds 
these  substances  into  living  organisms.  The  processes  of  life  are 
largely  mechanical,  the  food  is  split  up  into  combinations  suitable 
for  deposit  from  the  blood  as  bone,  muscle,  tendon,  hair,  teeth, 
etc.,  and  none  realizes  the  mechanical  nature  of  these  processes 
so  clearly  as  the  one  skilled  in  the  use  of  the  high  power  micro- 
scope. He  will  take  the  flesh,  bones,  etc.,  and  magnify  them  to 
an  extent  equal  to  making  man  a  mile  in  height  and  proportion- 
ately broad.  He  demonstrates  that  not  only  a  man,  but  all  other 
animals,  and  also  plants  without  exception,  are  composed  of  in- 
numerable little  specks  called  cells,  which  are  compressed  me- 
chanically into  a  variety  of  shapes.  These  cells  differ  slightly 
from  each  other  in  composition,  according  to  location,  but  in  the 
main,  they  consist  of  the  same  carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen  and 
nitrogen;  occasionally  iron,  phosphorus  cr  lime  is  added.  Each 
cell  eats,  grows,  splits  into  two  or  more  cells,  and  is  finally  con- 
sumed or  thrown  off  to  be  replaced  by  its  successors,  and  every 
one  of  these  multitudinous  cells,  var^'ing  in  size  from  a  hundred 
thousandth  of  an  inch  to  one-tenth  of  an  inch,  has  proceeded  from 
a  single  cell  which  grew  and  divided  up  into  the  colony  that  forms 
the  individual.  And  that  original  cell,  which  by  its  multiplica- 
tion formed  the  man,  is  an  tgg.  The  original  cell  which  by  its 
multiplication  formed  the  tree  or  other  plant  is  the  seed.  The 
main  chemical  difference  between  the  seed  and  the  Qgg  being  the 
frequent  absence  of  nitrogen  from  the  first  named.  Eggs  and 
seeds  vary  in  size  from  invisibility  to  the  unaided  eye,  up  to  ^  foot 
in  diameter.  A  hen's  egg  seems  to  you  a  very  lifeless  thing,  but  it 
depends  upon  what  you  call  life  as  to  whether  it  is  to  be  so  regard- 
ed or  not.  When  the  protoplasm  of  that  egg  is  capable  of  being 
warmed  into  cell  division,  to  the  chick's  formation,  you  will  grant, 
probably,  that  it  lives,  although  it  does  not  show  life  through  visi- 
ble motions  of  its  particles.    When  the  chemical  constituents  of 


EVOLUTION. 


95 


that  egg  break  down  into  simpler  combinations  and  each  of  them 
is  capable  of  assimilating  carbon,  hydrogen,  etc.,  and  building 
them  up  into  higher  and  complex  molecules  similar  to  the  cell 
protoplasm,  there  is  life.  When  the  process  is  inverted  and  ret- 
rograde, when  the  solids  break  down  into  liquids  and  both  evolve 
gases,  often  simple  elements,  then  the  cell  or  individual  is  dead. 

Naturally  physiologists  are  deeply  interested  in  the  cellular 
phenomena  and  the  problem  of  life  is  being  chased  with  micro- 
scopes and  reagents  until  it  is  becoming  better  understood  at 
least.  Hoppe-Seyler,  at  the  inauguration  of  a  great  German 
physiological  laboratory,  spoke  of  life  as  that  chemical  powxr  that 
enabled  protoplasmic  molecules  to  exist  in  an  anhydrous  condition 
in  a  hydrated  medium.  In  as  plain  language  as  possible  the  ele- 
mentary atoms  that  are  grouped  into  particles  exist  dry  amidst 
water.  That  does  not  exactly  express  it,  but  it  is  as  near  as  tech- 
nical language  can  be  translated  in  this  instance. 

A  low  living  representative  of  the  cell  abounds  in  our  gut- 
ters, crawls  over  our  roofs,  and  is  in  ditches,  all  about  us.  It  is 
known  as  the  amoeba.  It  is,  so  to  speak,  a  living,  moving,  tgg,  that 
never  passes  beyond  the  egg  stage.  It  is  like  a  little  speck  of  al- 
bumen, or  white  of  egg,  and  has  no  organs  whatever ;  no  eyes, 
feet,  ears,  nerves,  muscles  or  bones ;  it  is  merely  a  particle  of  jelly, 
yet  it  moves  by  spreading  out,  pouring  itself  along  in  a  streak, 
and  when  anything  it  can  assimilate  is  touched,  such  as  vegetable 
or  animal  matter,  gradually  it  converts  such  edibles  to  its  own 
use,  then  it  grows  and  splits  into  two  amceb?e,  which  part  com- 
pany and  they  in  turn  eat,  grow  and  divide.  Now  the  difference 
between  this  cell  form,  the  unicellular  and  other  cell  forms,  the 
multicellular,  is  simply  and  mainly  in  the  cells,  into  which  it  di- 
vides, not  sticking  together.  The  amoeba  is  the  egg  form  and 
never  can  be  anything  but  an  egg,  and  it  remains  as  it  is.  But 
somewhere,  somehow,  one  more  amoeba,  out  of  the  countless 
billions  which  went  on  and  still  go  on  parting  company,  did  co- 
here, probably  by  a  little  accidental  hardening  of  the  outer  mem- 
brane enveloping  it.  The  splitting  or  fission  process  went  on,  but 
the  cells  clung  together  and  we  have  the  mulberry  form  of  low 
living  animals,  such  as  the  Norwegian  "flimmerball."  It  is  no- 
ticed that  when  finally  the  mulberry  or  "synamoeba"  form  does 


96  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

split  it  gives  birth  to  amoebae,  which  afterward  become  mulberry 
forms  again,  like  the  parent.  Now  comes  a  change,  one  or  a  few 
of  those  mulberry  forms,  apparently  by  accident,  took  a  step 
higher  and  originated  the  pouched  or  ''gastseada"  form.  If  you 
can  imagine  the  cells  of  the  mulberry  form  gathered  at  the  sur- 
face of  its  globe,  with  water  in  the  middle,  suddenly  collapsing, 
you  will  have  the  pouch  constructed  with  two  layers,  like  an  old 
Dutch  worsted  night  cap,  capable  of  being  turned  either  way.  A 
bag  with  two  thicknesses  of  material.  Here  we  get  the  first 
glimpse  of  differentiation,  or  division  of  labor  between  cells. 
Those  upon  the  inside  of  the  pouch  do  the  food  gathering  and 
pass  it  through  themselves  to  the  other  cells  and  the  outer  cells 
attend  to  navigation.  Changes  of  environment  have  produced 
a  vast  multitude  of  animals  with  this  shape  upon  which  accessory 
organs  have  grown  by  development.  The  sea  anemone  and  the 
earth  worm  are  close  to  this  stage.  The  worm  is  merely  an 
elongated  pouch  animal.  The  double  layers  of  cells  are  demon- 
strable in  'it.  When  a  pouch  animal,  as  the  worm,  develops  an 
Qgg  internally,  that  egg  resembles  the  single  cell  amoeba,  next  the 
mulberry  form,  and  lastly  the  pouch  or  worm  form. 

The  back-boned  animals  come  next,  but  we  cannot  dwell  upon 
the  rapid  and  many  changes  that  take  place  in  the  evolution  of 
one  higher  form  into  a  still  higher.  The  acrania  or  headless  stage 
follows  with  a  cartilagious  rod  instead  of  a  backbone.  This  head- 
less form  exists  as  a  headless  animal  called  the  amphioxus,  a 
Mediterranean  fishlike  form.  It  has  rudimentary  blood  vessels 
and  its  young  pass  through  all  the  previous  stages  to  the  acranial. 
That  is,  first  a  single  cell,  then  mulberry  and  pouch  forms. 

The  tenth  stage  of  Haeckel  is  that  of  single  nostriled  animals 
like  the  lamprey  eels,  and  both  embryology  and  comparative  anat- 
omy show  that  these  eels  pass  by  easy  gradations  into  the  selachii, 
or  what  are  now  represented  by  the  living  sharks,  only  less  highly 
organized.  Sharks  pass  through  all  the  previous  stages  to  the  eel 
or  single  nostril  stage  in  their  development. 

The  living  Salamander  fish  represents  the  twelfth  or  mud 
fish  stage.  Gilled  amphibians  come  next.  Tadpoles  reach  their 
development  through  all  the  stages  mentioned  till  they  resemble 
the  mud  fish,  when  the  gills  drop  off  and  the  frog  appears.   Some 


EVOLUTION. 


97 


of  these  amphibia  with  gills  retained  their  tails  and  this  form 
dates  back  to  the  coal  period  geologically.  From  these  tailed  ba- 
trachia  came  lizards  and  reptiles  generally.  Geology  and  the  de- 
velopment of  these  animals  prove  this.  One  of  the  best  proven 
successions  we  have  is  the  transformation  of  reptiles  into  birds. 
Of  course  reptiles  remain  as  reptiles  today,  but  at  a  very  early 
period  of  the  world's  history  several,  mayhap  many,  reptiles  slow- 
ly developed  into  birds.  Scales,  such  as  fishes  and  reptiles  have, 
many  be  shown  to  divide  into  hairs,  and  hairs  into  feathers.  The 
downy,  hairy  breast  of  the  little  chicken,  and  its  wing  feathers, 
may  be  seen  to  become  broader  and  split  at  the  ends,  resplitting 
until  each  hair  becomes  a  feather.  The  fossil  remains  of  animals 
half  reptilian,  half  bird-like,  have  been  found,  and  all  birds  pass 
through  the  previous  stages  from  the  single  cell  to  the  reptilian 
form,  and  even  develop  and  lose  their  gills  in  the  process  of  de- 
velopment. Thus,  step  by  step,  marsupials  like  the  kangaroo 
sprang  from  a  form  called  promammalian,  like  the  queer  platy- 
pus, which  has  the  body  of  a  dog,  the  tail  of  a  beaver,  spurs  of  a 
rooster,  and  the  bill  and  feet  of  a  duck. 

Half-apes,  or  prosimise,  probably  originated  about  the  begin- 
ning of  the  Tertiary  period  out. of  the  marsupial  or  rat-like  form, 
and  through  a  higher  brain  development.  The  lemurs  are  large 
living  specimens  of  this  class  and  the  resemblances  to  the  lower 
and  next  higher  forms  are  seen  combined  in  them.  The  flat- 
nosed,  tailed-apes,  branched  out  to  one  side,  while  the  sharp-nosed 
stand  in  our  line.  The  jaw  of  the  lemur  was  modified  in  the  tailed 
ape,  with  narrow  noses,  the  catarrhine,  and  the  claws  became 
converted  into  nails.  The  manlike  apes  or  anthropoids  follow, 
namely,  orang  outang  and  gibbon  in  Asia,  the  gorilla  and  chim- 
panzee in  Africa.  These  apes  lost  their  tails,  partially  lost  their 
hairy  coverings,  and  developed  brains.  It  was  from  a  prehis- 
toric anthropoid  form,  such  as  this,  that  the  ape-like  man,  the 
speechless  primeval  man,  arose.  The  forehand  of  the  ape  form 
developed  into  a  human  hand  and  the  hinder  hand  into  a  foot, 
the  fingers  degenerated  into  toes. 

All  the  preceding  stages  mentioned  are  passed  through  by 
every  living  man  in  his  development,  preceding  and  after  his 
birth,  the  single  cell  to  the  lemur,  and  at  birth  the  ape-like  stage. 


98  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Observe  the  prehensile  power  of  the  infant's  foot.    It  has  the  mon- 
key-Hke  abiUty  of  grasping  with  its  feet  and  finger-hke  toes. 

The  gradual  development  of  the  animal  language  of  sounds 
into  words  going  hand  in  hand  with  the  better  developed  larynx, 
lungs,  etc.,  and  the  brain,  to  regulate  the  vocal  parts,  brings  man 
up  to  his  present  advance  upon  the  brutes;  some  men  rather,  for 
some  Fuegians  have  but  a  miserable  vocabulary,  and  they  cannot 
count  over  three.    They  fairly  represent  a  class  of  primitive  men. 

In  September,  1901,  Professor  Hseckel  studied  a  human-like 
monkey  of  Java.  An  interesting  specimen  of  the  young  gibbon 
was  watched  by  him  at  his  own  house  there.  The  species  is 
found  only  in  Java,  and  is  called  Hylobates  leuciscus.  The  na- 
tives call  it,  on  account  of  the  characteristic  sound  it  utters, 
*'oa."  When  standing  it  is  scarcely  taller  than  a  child  of  six  years. 
The  head  is  comparatively  small  and  it  has  a  small,  slender  waist. 
The  legs  are  short  and  the  arms  much  longer.  The  face  is  more 
human  than  that  of  the  orang  outang.  Professor  H?eckel  says : 
*'Its  physiognomy  reminded  me  of  the  manager  of  an  insolvent 
bank  pondering  with  wrinkled  brow  over  the  results  of  a  crash. 
Distrust  of  the  ''oa"  towards  all  white  Europeans  is  noticeable. 
On  the  other  hand,  he  was  on  terms  of  intimate  friendship  with 
the  Malays  in  our  household,  especially  with  the  small  children. 
He  never  crawled  on  all  fours  when  tired  of  running,  but 
stretched  on  the  grass  beneath  the  tropical  sun  with  one  arm 
under  his  head.  ''When  I  held  tasty  food  just  out  of  his  reach 
he  cried  like  a  naughty  child,  'huite,  huite,'  a  sound  altogether 
different  from  'oa,  oa,'  with  which  he  expressed  various  emo- 
tions. He  had  a  third  and  more  shrill  sound  when  he  was  sud- 
denly frightened.  The  speech  of  these  human  monkeys  has  not 
many  different  sounds,  but  they  are  modulated  and  altered  in  tone 
and  strength  with  a  number  of  repetitions.  They  also  use  many 
gestures,  motions  with  their  hands,  and  grimaces,  which  are  so 
expressive  in  manner  that  a  careful  observer  can  detect  their  dif- 
ferent wishes  and  various  emotions.  My  specimen  liked  sweet 
wine;  he  drank  like  a  child,  and  peeled  bananas  and  oranges,  just 
as  we  are  accustomed  to  do,  holding  the  fruit  in  his  left  hand. 
Most  of  the  Malays  do  not  regard  the  gibbon  and  orang  outang 
as  brutes.     Thev  believe  that  the  former  are  bewitched  men,  and 


EVOLUTION. 


99 


the  latter  to  be  criminals  who  have  been  changed  to  monkeys  as 
punishment.  Others  think  they  are  men  in  the  course  of  de- 
velopment." 

Evidences  are  abundant  to  prove  that  many  fishlike  mammals, 
as  whales,  descended  from  forms  more  like  land  animals  resem- 
bling the  bear.  In  some  whales  the  very  young  have  teeth  and 
rudimentary  leg  bones,  which  in  the  adult  are  lost.  It  is  conceiv- 
able that  millions  of  years  ago  some  bears  betook  themselves  to 
the  sea  for  fish,  and  in  time  their  progeny  developed  abilities  to 
survive  in  a  watery  medium,  better  than  upon  land.  It  can  be 
easily  demonstarted  that  the  fins  of  the  fish  pass  gradually  into 
the  limbs  of  quadrupeds,  and  we  are  justified  in  believing  that  this 
change  came  about  by  some  fishes  taking  to  land  for  food. 

Consistently  with  the  Darwinian  discovery  we  find  rudimen- 
tary organs  in  many  animals,  including  man,  which  enables  us 
to  trace  the  origin  of  such  beings  better.  The  ostrich  and  casso- 
wary have  rudimentary  wings  because  their  ancestors  gradually 
came  to  depend  more  upon  their  legs  than  upon  flying.  The  com- 
mon house  fly  has  rudimentary  hind  wings,  but  it  descended 
with  all  other  insects  from  a  single  form  with  four  wings  and 
three  pairs  of  legs.  In  thin  animals,  as  serpents  and  serpent- 
like lizards,  one  lung  is  rudimentary.  Birds  similarly  have  the 
right  ovary  atrophied.  Man  has  rudimentary  muscles  attached 
to  ears  which  are  useful  in  lower  animals,  but  are  functionless 
in  him.  The  coccyx  end  of  the  spine  is  the  same  in  the  four 
higher  apes  as  in  man.  These  five  primates,  man  and  the  an- 
thropoids, have  only  rudimentary  tails.  Not  only  does  the  un- 
born human  baby  have  a  visible  tail,  but  at  one  stage  it  possesses 
gills.  Horses  have  what  are  known  as  splint  bones,  which  in 
their  progenitors  were  extra  leg-bones  or  finger  bones,  with 
hoofs  at  the  end.  The  warty  growth  on  the  inside  of  the  horses' 
legs  are  rudimentary  hoofs.  Man  has  a  little  fleshy  growth  in 
the  inner  corner  of  his  eye ;  this  is  called  the  caruncle,  and  is  a 
rudiment  of  the  nictitating  membrane  or  third  eyelid  of  lower 
animals  which  may  become  pathological.  A  long  muscle  which 
in  four-footed  animals  serves  a  useful  purpose  in  the  hind  leg 
is  only  occasionally  found  in  human  corpses,  and  when  found 
is  often  not  attached  to  the  leg.     The  vermiform  appendix  at- 


lOO  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

tached  to  intestines  has  no  use  in  man,  except  to  aid  in  killings 
him  at  times,  but  is  an  important  entrail  in  birds. 

Prof.  E.  D.  Cope  found  fossil  remains  of  the  ancestor  of  all 
horses,  and,  strangely  enough,  it  was  a  carnivore  or  flesh  eater. 
It  had  five  toes  and  was  digitigrade,  that  is  it  walked  upon  the 
tips  of  its  fingers  like  a  cat.  As  time  passed  and  swiftness  be- 
came a  life-saving  ability,  and  it  was  driven  to  the  plains,  its 
descendants  became  grass  eaters,  through  compulsion,  and  the 
finger  and  toe  bones  lengthened  until  the  heel  cord  of  the  mod- 
ern horse  is  half  way  to  its  body,  while  the  other  fingers,  one 
by  one,  fell  off  as  they  became  useless.  The  horse  evolution  is 
thoroughly  demonstrated.  We  have  the  bony  remains  of  the 
five-toed,  four-toed,  three-toed,  two-toed  horses  in  direct  lines 
from  each  other,  the  greater  number  of  toes  lying  in  the  deeper 
strata  of  the  earth. 

The  proofs  of  evolutionary  doctrine  may  be  summed  up  by 
condensing  from  Hgeckel  as  follows:  i.  The  fossil  evidences  of 
the  gradual  appearance  and  historical  succession  of  plants  and' 
animals,and  evidence  of  progressive  changes  in  their  forms.  2.  The 
history  of  organ  development  in  plants  and  animals,  the  older  ani- 
mals having  ruder,  the  later  more  perfect  organs.  3.  The  connec- 
tion between  the  history  of  descent  of  animals  and  that  of  the 
individual.  Each  man  and  animal  repeats  in  his  life-time  the 
stages  through  which  all  his  ancestors  have  passed.  For  in- 
stance, the  child  is  a  thoughtless,  cruel  savage,  the  youth  a  bar- 
barian and  the  adult  may  be  a  reasonable  person.  4.  The  re- 
semblances between  all  animals  point  to  a  common  origin.  5. 
The  rudimentary  organs.  6.  The  resemblances  of  species  of 
plants  and  animals  in  family  groups.  7.  The  geographical  dis- 
tribution of  species  from  centres  or  single  localities.  8.  The  ad- 
justment of  species  to  their  environment,  the  weak  dying  off  and 
^  fittest  surviving.  9.  The  unity  and  completeness  of  biology  as 
a  whole.  No  theory  so  comprehensive  as  the  evolutionary,  or  sO' 
satisfactory,  has  ever  been  announced. 

Natural  Selection  is  a  term  used  by  Evolutionists  to  include 
a  great  many  instances  of  favorable  opportunity  enabling  vic- 
tory in  the  battle  of  life.  Seeds  of  any  plant  will  not  grow  if 
they  fall  upon  rocks  and  in  dry  places.     If  the  necessary  soiU 


EVOLUTION.  lOI 

heat  and  moisture  is  encountered  by  the  seed  it  will  germinate. 
If  moisture  only  is  furnished,  then,  in  most  cases,  the  seed  will 
decay,  and  in  these  simple  matters  we  have  instances  of  the 
selection  of  Nature.  Similarly  cats  do  not  live  to  catch  rats. 
Plenty  of  rats  will  enable  the  raising  of  a  larger  number  of  cats. 
Had  Daniel  Webster  been  born  in  the  African  wilds  his  oratory 
would  not  have  been  heard  of  in  civilized  countries.  The  acci- 
dental possession  of  brains,  location  and  opportunity  constituted 
Vv^hat  natural  selection  did  for  him.  Races  accidentally  best 
fitted  to  resist  the  diseases  of  a  country  and  to  cope  with  neigh- 
boring hostile  forces  are  the  ones  to  survive;  this  is  an  instance 
•of  natural  selection.  Animals  that  have  not  some  advantages 
succumb  to  the  stronger.  The  mole  protects  himself  by  burrow- 
ing, the  deer  by  his  flight,  natural  abilities  enable  them  to  live. 
The  law  is  capable  of  indefinite  extension.  Had  Newton  or 
Herschel  been  born  before  the  days  of  telescopy  and  mathematics 
nature  could  have  made  no  selection  of  their  brains  for  our  in- 
struction, at  least  in  the  ways  it  did. 

An  old  instance  of  the  misinterpretation  of  matters  relating 
to  nature  lies  in  the  explanation  of  many  of  the  polar  animals 
being  white.  It  was  pointed  to  as  an  evidence  of  the  wisdom  of 
providence  in  enabling  them  to  remain  in  their  icy  and  snowy 
regions  undiscovered  by  enemies.  The  real  explanation  is  that 
because  such  animals  are  white  their  chances  for  escape  are 
better,  and  in  conjunction  with  the  law  of  heredity  it  is  evident 
that  those  animals  that  do  escape,  and  only  those,  will  propa- 
gate their  kind,  which,  subject  to  the  same  pruning  action  of 
nature,  ever  tends  to  limit  the  color  to  white ;  but  the  wolves, 
seals  and  many  others  that  have  size,  strength,  a  watery  medium, 
or  some  other  advantage,  remain  colored.  And  those  animals 
which  change  their  color  to  a  darker  one  when  the  snows  melt 
and  the  ground  is  bare  are  still  more  likely  to  escape. 

The  art  of  horticulture  has  through  natural  selection  given  us 
many  varieties  of  apples  when  at  one  timei  there  was  only  one 
original  apple  form.  Differences  and  peculiar  advantages  have 
thus  arisen  in  horse,  cow,  sheep  and  other  branches  of  stock  rais- 
ing.   The  Shetland  pony  is  a  degenerate  form  of  the  same  kind 


I02  THE    EVOLUTION    OP^    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

of  horse  from  which  the  Arabian  has  descended,  both  through 
natural  selection  processes. 

It  is  difficult  to  say  often  what  constitutes  an  advantage  that 
will  enable  Nature  to  select  a  form  for  survival.  Sometimes 
intelligence  will  be  serviceable,  sometimes  stupidity,  the  shell 
of  the  turtle  is  as  effective  toward  life  saving  as  the  wings  of 
the  eagle.  A  deformity  even  may  serve  this  end.  Wingless  birds 
like  the  apteryx,  or  practically  wingless  like  the  penguin  or  dodo, 
thrived  because  they  could  not  fly  and  were  not  in  danger  of 
being  blown  out  to  sea. 

Gardeners  have  in  the  last  hundred  years  changed,  advan- 
tageously, the  peculiarities  of  thousands  of  flowers  and  plants, 
through  selection. 

The  red  clover,  trifolium  pratense,  is  propagated  by  bees 
which  in  search  of  honey  fructify  the  flower  by  carrying  the 
pollen  of  one  to  the  stigma  of  another,  the  clover  not  visited  by 
bees  does  not  yield  a  single  seed.  The  number  of  bees  is  deter- 
mined by  the  number  of  their  enemies,  the  most  destructive  are 
the  field  mice.  Cats  destroy  the  mice,  and  Carl  Vogt  and  Huxley 
carried  out  this  instance  of  natural  selection  amusingly  in  these 
words :  ''Cattle  which  feed  on  clover  are  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant foundations  of  the  wealth  of  England.  Englishmen  pre- 
serve their  bodily  and  mental  powers  chiefly  by  making  excel- 
lent meat,  roast  beef  and  beefsteak,  their  principal  food.  The 
English  owe  the  superiority  of  their  brains  and  minds  over  those 
of  other  nations,  in  a  great  measure,  to  their  excellent  meat. 
But  this  is  clearly  dependent  upon  the  cats  which  pursue  the 
mice.  Old  maids  have  a  fondness  for  cats,  and  so  to  these  old 
maids  who  pet  cats  is  due  the  fructification  of  the  clover  and  the 
prosperity  of  England. 

In  Paraguay  there  are  no  wild  horses  and  oxen,  as  in  other 
contiguous  parts  of  South  America.  This  is  explained  by  newly 
born  animals  being  killed  in  that  country  by  a  small  fly  which 
does  not  thrive  elsewhere.  A  little  disturbance  to  the  balance 
of  life  in  the  destruction  of  apparently  insignificant  insects  may 
be  attended  with  the  most  far-reaching  and  important  conse- 
quences. This  law  of  natural  selection  includes  that  of  the  sur- 
vival of  the  fittest.     Savage  races  invariably  die  out  with  the 


EVOLUTION.  103 

advent  of  civilization.  The  battle  is  to  the  strong  in  brain  rather 
than  limb,  the  weaker  are  driven  to  the  wall  and  those  best 
adapted  live  and  multiply  till  a  superior  power  crushes  them  in 
turn.  The  ''fittest"  surviving  does  not  mean  that  the  ''best"  is 
always  the  victor  in  life,  for  the  fittest  may  be  the  scoundrel,  the 
quack  or  the  hypocrite  sometimes.  Ordinarily  people  who  think 
most  and  are  sincere  are  those  who  appear  to  be  the  ablest  to 
survive  where  the  thoughtless  would  not,  but  during  the  time  of 
the  Spanish  inquisition  it  was  the  thinking  and  the  sincere  men 
and  women  who  were  destroyed,  and  Spain  suffers  much  degra- 
dation today  from  the  survival  of  the  "fittest"  who  were  enabled 
to  escape  the  inquisition.  An  intellectual  descent  has  been  cut 
off  in  this  case,  for  it  was  the  unfittest  to  survive. 

The  next  most  important  law  is  Sexual  Selection.  It  is 
through  this  that  gaudily  colored  birds,  like  the  pea  fowl  or  birds 
of  paradise,  retain  and  even  originated  their  colors.  Song  birds 
are  known  to  compete  with  their  voices  for  mates,  and  the  song- 
ster whose  voice  suited  was  the  victor,  and  what  was  more  nat- 
ural than  that  singing  should  improve  through  descent  from 
such  parents.  Most  animals  contend  for  their  mates  with  horns, 
hoofs  or  teeth,  and  combats  for  wives  was  the  rule  with  primitive 
races  of  men.  Nowadays  the  purse  well  filled,  or  some  such 
allurement,  is  held  out  for  the  coveted  lady. 

It  is  through  the  operation  of  this  law  that  ugliness,  deformi- 
ties, and  even  undesirable  mental  traits,  are  being  eradicated. 
Certainly  the  people  of  this  era  are  better  favored  physically  and 
mentally  than  those  of  earlier  ages. 

Natural  selection  and  Sexual  selection  thus  work  together  to 
conserve  the  useful,  improve,  modify,  evolve  new  and  better 
forms,  with  occasional  retrogressive  blunders. 

The  law  of  Dift'erentiation  or  Division  of  Labor  is  also  worthy 
of  consideration.  It  is  by  virtue  of  this  that  some  men  develop 
in  one  direction,  others  in  another;  the  advantages  of  black- 
smiths and  lawyers,  shoemakers  and  watchmakers  keeping  to 
and  improving  upon  their  separate  vocations  are  too  evident  to 
need  mention,  yet  an  application  of  this  law  of  labor  division 
has,  till  recently,  been  overlooked  where  it  has  been  operative 


I04  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

countless  ages  in  animate  things,  especially  in  the  organs  which 
serve  life  functions  in  all  plants  and  animals. 

Between  the  years  of  i860  and  1870  degenerates  flocked  to 
the  gold  fields  of  California  and  perished  in  large  numbers. 
Many  who  survived  increased  the  insane  asylum  population  of 
the  coast.  Those  who  were  starved  and  frozen  to  death  in  Alaska 
in  their  search  for  wealth  were  the  unfittest  to  survive,  though 
many  may  have  been  better  men  than  those  who  succeeded  and 
lived  to  return  home.  When  the  communistic  riots  broke  out  in 
Paris  the  excita|ple  insane  who  exposed  themselves  on  the  barri- 
cades were  killed  ofif  to  such  an  extent  that  the  average  insane 
asylum  population  in  France  was  reduced  greatly  for  several 
years  thereafter.  Ordinarily  the  insane  may  be  fit  to  survive 
when  cared  for,  but  in  such  instances  nature  finds  them  unfit 
and  in  the  countless  wars  of  earlier  times  the  mentally  unsound 
perished  quickly.  Unfortunately  wars  destroy,  as  though  they 
were  unfit  to  survive,  people  who  were  otherwise  more  worthy 
of  life  than  many  who  saved  their  lives. 

Man  has  exterminated  the  mammoth,  the  urox  or  aurochs, 
the  quagga,  dodo,  auk,  and  has  nearly  exterminated  the  okapi, 
the  recently  found  progenitor  of  the  giraffe,  and  the  buffalo. 
,  Such  instincts  as  the  young  cuckoo  throwing  his  foster  broth- 
ers from  the  nest  so  as  to  get  all  the  food  himself,  ants  making 
slaves  and  turning  plant  lice  into  cow-like  milk  givers  for  them- 
selves and  the  larvae  of  the  ichneumonidse  feeding  within  the  live 
bodies  of  caterpillars,  lead  to  advancement  of  organic  beings  in 
a  physical  way,  by  multiplying,  by  varying,  and  letting  the  strong- 
est live  and  the  weakest  die.  An  illustration  of  an  advantage 
enabling  a  city  to  exist  at  a  time  when  other  places  were  being 
destroyed  occurs  in  Corinth,  which  held  a  situation  protecting 
it  from  enemies.  But  what  may  be  advantage  in  one  age  may 
not  be  later ;  for  example  iron  armor  answered  very  well  against 
arrows  and  spears,  but  cannon  balls  and  bomb  shells  made  the 
picturesque  armor  worthless  and  ridiculous.  ''Dog  in  the  manger 
jealousies'.'  of  neighboring  nations  proved  an  advantage  to  the 
otherwise  weak  little  republic  of  San  Marino,  which  survives  in 
Italy  like  an  imperium  in  imperio.  It  passed  through  the  sov- 
ereignty of    the  Roman   republic  and  empire,  the    Goths,  the 


EVOLUTION.  105 

Creeks  and  the  Germans,  and  remains  free  with  no  miHtary  or 
taxes,  and  since  A.  D.  1300  its  freedom  rests  upon  its  being  high 
up  in  the  mountains  and  the  "friendship  of  potentates,"  the  sour 
grapes  of  Aesop's  fable. 

Transplanted  from  the  older  country,  where  the  struggle  to 
•exist  is  extreme,  like  that  between  the  Siberian  wolves  who 
snap  up  the  first  of  their  pack  to  be  wounded,  Polish  laborers  are 
described  as  existing  in  Chicago  in  a  deplorable  state,  poverty- 
stricken,  ignorant,  stupid,  hungry  and  dirty,  amidst  industrial 
conflicts,^  fighting  one  another  to  the  death  for  enough  to  live 
upon. 

Misconceptions  of  the  law  of  survival  incessantly  occur.  Nat- 
urally the  sincere  student  thinks  that  if  he  fits  himself  honestly 
and  fully  for  his  profession  he  will  be  rewarded  by  employment. 
He  is  in  error,  for  his  fitness  to  practice  does  not  mean  that  he 
is  the  fittest  to  succeed.  He  may  deserve  to  succeed  and  be 
known  to  those  who  are  capable  of  judging  to  be  able  and 
skillful,  but  the  people  upon  whom  he  depends  for  pay  for  serv- 
ices are  not  informed,  and  the  unscrupulous  charlatan  imposes 
upon  the  ignorant  public  and  revels  in  ^wealth  obtained  by  deceit 
and  injury  to  his  fellows,  where  the  best  man,  the  one  who  could 
have  done  real  service,  was  left  in  poverty  and  unrecognized. 

Then  in  matters  of  dress  we  have  survivals  from  many  ages. 
Ear-rings  come  down  to  us  from  savage  days  and  bracelets  indi- 
cated at  one  time  that  the  wearers  were  slaves.  When  the  young 
ofiicer  puts  on  his  sword  belt  he  is  surprised  at  the  convenience 
of  the  two  buttons  on  the  back  of  his  coat,  and  is  unaware  that 
those  buttons  are  a  survival  from  a  time  when  gentlemen  wore 
swords  and  were  retained  after  swords  went  out  of  fashion.  The 
lower  set  of  buttons  were  used  to  hold  the  coat-tails  out  of  the 
Avay  when  it  was  customary  to  carry  the  sword  blade  between 
the  legs.  Similarly  when  times  degenerate,  as  -they  always  do 
v/hen  a  war  breaks  out,  or  as  they  may  be  said  to  revert  to  for- 
mer conditions,  it  is  surprising  how  readily  we  become  barbarians 
or  savages,  and  an  argument  against  a  standing  army  in  time 
of  peace  could  be  that  man  is  a  natural  soldier  and  needs  little 
training  for  warfare.    Certain  ideas  may  suddenly  take  root  such 

*  I.  K.  Friedman,  by  Bread  Alone,  1901. 


I06  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

as  caused  the  crusades  in  the  nth  and  later  centuries  and  be 
the  fittest  to  survive  because  appeaHng  to  the  emotions  of  a 
similarly  constituted  set  of  people,  though  belonging  to  different 
nations  and  times.  The  Mohammedan  teaching  is  so  simple  and 
appeals  so  directly  to  the  ignorant  heart  and  passions  of  crude 
Arabians  that  when  first  taught  it  took  like  wild-fire  and  created 
the  vast  Ottoman  and  Mohammedan  empires.  One  God,  the  right 
to  enslave  or  exterminate  enemies,  an  absolute  claim  to  the  wealth 
of  the  world  and  assurance  of  inheriting  a  future  life,  with  all 
the  enjoyment  of  this  life  multiplied,  are  the  inducements  held 
out  to  the  ''common  sense"  of  these  higher  kinds  of  apes,  with 
whom  we  have  much  in  common  and  whom  we  resemble  more 
than  we  like  to  admit. 

Many  things  that  are  unaccountable  can  be  explained  by  this 
principle  of  survival.  For  example,  the  English  hostler  will  hiss 
while  currying  his  horse  and  the  Western  cowboy  hisses  when  he 
tries  to  stop  a  runaway  pony.  Connecting  these  matters  with 
the  fact  that  the  hiss  of  the  rattlesnake  often  causes  a  horse  to 
halt,  to  enable  him  to  locate  and  escape  from  the  reptile,  the 
origin  of  the  custom  may  be  explained,  though  not  suspected  by 
the  hostler  or  cowboy.  Oaths  and  imprecations  or  ejaculations 
in  all  likelihood  come  down  to  us  through  untold  ages  of  excla- 
mations, roars,  grunts,  howls,  etc.,  of  progenitors  who  expressed 
their  surprise  in  terse  and  rude  ways.  Swearing,  deep,  loud  or 
whispered,  is  like  the  lion's  roar,  the  jackal's  snarl,  the  spit  of 
the  cat,  and  the  growl  of  the  dog;  and  the  kind  of  oath  used 
may  outlive  the  ideas  of  the  people  who  originally  used  it.  For 
example,  many  a  German  today  when  excited  exclaims :  "Don- 
nerwetter,"  which,  when  the  "thunder  god"  was  reverenced  by 
the  primitive  Teutons  could  have  been  rank  blasphemy,  further- 
more the  Latins  and  Germans  are  more  careless  than  the  English 
in  using  the  name  of  God  unnecessarily,  as  a  survival  from  times 
when  the  Christian's  God  was  not  reverenced  at  all. 

Just  as  birds  come  from  lizards,  and  yet  we  have  reptiles  to- 
day, and  as  horses  came  from  carnivores,  and  we  have  flesh- 
eating  animals  today ;  and  the  sharks,  fishes  and  marsupials  still 
survive  through  which  man  and  apes  developed,  so  thousands  of 
years  hence,  whatever  civilization  may  be  then,  lower  types  will 


EVOLUTION. 


107 


doubtless  remain,  though  the  rule  is  that  the  lower  dies  out  in 
the  presence  of  the  more  exalted.  It  would  be  hard  to  find  con- 
ditions to  which  Natural  Selection  does  not  apply.  In  every 
branch  of  life  there  is  contention  with  destruction  of  the  unsuc- 
cessful and  the  triumph  of  the  successful.  Vast  fields  of  plants 
grow  rank  and  large  in  the  tropics  where  heat  and  moisture 
favor,  and  both  plants  and  animals  fight  there  for  supremacy. 
In  the  Arctics  the  mosses  and  algae  alone  survive  the  frost,  and 
farther  north  no  animals  or  plants  can  exist. 

Things  develop  or  retrograde.  Ideas  grow  and  are  throttled 
or  live  for  a  while,  or  even  for  centuries,  to  be  supplanted  by 
others  better  suited  to  new  conditions.  What  may  be  consid- 
ered evil  develops,  differentiates,  succeeds  alongside  of  condi- 
tions people  may  consider  good,  and  both  good  and  evil  develop 
and  contend  for  place.  So  in  yourself  there  is  a  fight  between 
inclinations  and  principles,  and  it  depends  upon  circumstances 
as  to  which  may  dominate.  And  both  so-called  good  and  evil 
develop  for  the  same  reasons,  differentiation  and  specialization, 
and  they  combat  one  another  because  of  opportunity  and  self- 
interest.  For  instance,  some  police  chiefs  of  large  cities  take 
bribes  from  policemen  for  ''soft  beats"  and  they  blackmail  street- 
walkers, saloons  and  thieves,  proceedings  ranking  as  bad  in  the 
abstract,  but  it  is  such  a  tax  upon  crime  that  criminals  cannot 
afford  to  do  business,  so  that  in  the  end  it  amounts  to  the  same 
as  though  the  law  had  been  enforced,  and  what  may  be  called 
"good'-  may  thus  spring  from  official  thieves  fighting  unofficial 
crime  in  this  way,  with  the  occasional  hauling  up  before  a  grand 
jury  of  the  official  thieves,  or  the  upsetting  of  a  rotten  city  gov- 
ernment by  hysterical  reformers. 

As  some  faculties  or  organs  develop  or  some  forms  of  life  do 
also  it  may  be  at  the  expense  of  other  faculties,  organs,  or  living 
things.  Encroachments  of  nations  upon  each  other  often  result 
in  the  shrinking  or  extermination  of  one  and  growth  of  the  other. 
An  interesting  discussion  of  forest  rotation  or  the  disposition  one 
set  of  seeds  in  the  soil  have  to  succeed  another  kind  when  the 
conditions  are  more  favorable  for  the  successor,  is  given  by 
CampbelP,  the  larches  and  beeches  being  displaced  by  pines  and 

^American  Naturalist,  1886,  p.  521  and  p.  651. 


I08  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

firs,  and  these  in  turn  by  oak  trees,  showing  natural  selection  con- 
ditions at  certain  periods  favor  the  growth  from  certain  kinds  of 
seeds,  which  of  course  are  previously  in  the  soil  awaiting  their 
turn  to  sprout  and  develop.  Beavers  are  now  becoming  extinct  in 
America  as  they  were  also  hunted  out  of  existence  in  Holland  in 
1825.  Brown  rats  expel  the  black  rats  from  countries,  and  they 
are  enemies,  though  rats  and  mice  live  together  in  corn  stacks  ami- 
cably. The  Norwegian  rat  has  successfully  chased  other  species 
from  almost  all  countries.  Hippopotami  and  reindeer  remains 
are  found  side  by  side  in  several  regions  in  England,  and  some 
fossil  skulls  are  found  in  the  west  of  the  United  States  with  a 
sword-like  lower  tusk  curved  in  its  growth  till  it  penetrated  the 
brain  of  its  owner,  and  to  this  may  be  assigned  the  extermina- 
tion of  the  species,  an  unfortunate  kind  of  natural  selection  which 
may  have  been  brought  about  by  sexual  selection,  that  is  the 
curved  tusk  may  have  attracted  mates  as  ornamental,  but,  like 
many  other  luxuries  and  embellishments  favored  by  the  gentler 
sex,  it  proved  fatal  in  the  end  to  its  possessor.  There  has  been 
an  astonishing  destruction  of  buffalo  in  America,  known  as  bison 
in  Europe,  Bison  disappeared  from  Britain  earlier  than  did  the 
aurochs.  In  1500  bison  were  plenty  in  Poland,  and  a  remnant 
exists  in  the  Caucasus  today,  and  our  Yellowstone  Park  preserves 
survivors  of  the  once  vast  herds.  Bison  ranged  from  Siberia  into 
Alaska  and  abounded  in  the  black  forest  in  the  time  of  Julius 
Caesar,  and  in  the  loth  century  they  were  eaten  in  Switzerland 
and  Germany.  The  skulls  of  aurochs  fifty  inches  across  have 
been  found  in  the  peat  bogs,  pierced  with  flint  hatchets,  in  Brit- 
ain, Scotland  and  the  continent,  as  far  south  as  Greece.  The 
wingless  bird,  the  auk,  was  extinguished  in  the  last  century. 
An  extinct  marsupial  resembling  the  Kangaroo  walked  on  all 
fours,  and  extinct  elephant  remains  are  found  in  Pliestocene  Eu- 
rope from  Yorkshire  to  Algeria.  A  northern  sea-cow  or  manati 
was  so  helpless  and  stupid  it  was  quickly  exterminated  in  the 
1 8th  century.  Sturgeons  appeared  in  the  upper  Eocene  period 
and  notwithstanding  their  slaughter  is  incessant  and  prodigious 
they  are  the  fittest  to  survive  today,  because  they  increase  more 
rapidly  than  they  can  be  killed  off.  They  are  exceedingly  vora- 
cious, and  the  majority  are  carnivores  and,  like  salmon  males. 


EVOLUTION.  log 

often  eat  their  own  young.  Sturgeons  were  formerly  in  the 
Danube  by  the  thousands,  but  they  have  been  reduced  not  only 
in  numbers  but  in  size  also,  though  even  now  fish  of  1200  to  1500 
lbs.  are  occasionally  caught  there.  A  river  400  ft.  wide  has  been 
blocked,  in  Russia,  by  solid  masses  of  sturgeons  in  their  migra- 
tions. They  evidently  possess  some  advantage  that  causes  them 
to  be  selected  by  nature  to  survive  in  spite  of  hostile  surround- 
ings that  rapidly  reduce  other  forms  of  life.  While  there  is 
inheritance  to  fix  the  kinds  of  animals  and  .plants  so  that  descend- 
ants will  resemble  their  ancestors,  there  is  also  the  departure 
from  exact  resemblance  we  see  all  about  us  in  living  things,  and 
this  is  known  as  Variability.  Just  as  people  do  not  exactly  re- 
semble one  another  externally  in  their  features,  limbs,  complex- 
ions, and  so  on,  so  internally  there  are  equivalent  departures  from 
the  fixed  types  of  muscles,  arteries,  etc.,  and  owing  to  sexual 
selection  having  nothing  to  do  with  internal  organs,  and  natural 
selection  permitting  any  kind  of  feature  to  survive  and  be  trans- 
mitted that  satisfied  conditions  of  life  even  imperfectly,  the  truth 
of  the  claim  of  Wolff  that  internal  organs  are  more  variable  than 
the  external  could  be  explained.  Ear  variability  is  accounted  for 
by  Darwin  as  due  to  the  indifference  of  sexes  as  to  this  feature, 
hence  sexual  selection  does  not  influence  its  shape.  The  variability 
of  minds  of  men  is  very  great,  even  in  the  same  race,  and  among 
dogs  the  greatest  difference  of  character  can  be  seen.  Brehm 
says  each  monkey  has  his  individual  temper  and  disposition.  He 
mentions  one  baboon  remarkable  for  its  high  intelligence.  Much 
mental  capacity  is  innate  and  education  and  treatment  may  de- 
velop it.  Insanity  and  deteriorated  mental  powers  run  in  fami- 
lies, as  in  the  case  of  the  Spanish  Hapsburgs  and  Romanoffs  of 
Austria  and  Russia.  Domesticated  animals  vary  more  than  do 
wild  animals,  owing  to  the  variability  of  conditions.  Races  may 
also  run  down  or  develop  better  under  diverse  states.  Rank  and 
occupation  majce  changes  in  character.  Wealth  too  often  causes 
feebleness  of  mind  by  disuse.  Better  food  and  comfort  increase 
stature,  and  when  a  race  attains  its  highest  physical  development 
Beddoe  says  it  "rises  highest  in  energy  and  normal  vigor."  Sun- 
light and  heat  have  but  small  influence  in  producing  color  even 
during  ages.     With  animals  cold  and   damp  affect  their  hair 


no  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

growth.  Use  strengthens  muscles  and  disuse  degenerates  them. 
When  an  artery  is  tied  its  branches  develop,  a  lost  kidney  or  lung 
causes  the  other  to  increase  in  size  and  bones  increase  in  length 
and  thickness  by  carrying  greater  weight.  The  longer  legs  of 
man  as  compared  with  those  of  tree-climbing  apes  could  be  readily 
ascribed  to  the  progenitor  of  early  man  having  often  abandoned 
the  forests  and  coursed  over  plains,  steppes  and  savannahs  in 
chasing  prey  and  escaping  from  enemies,  and  thus  developing 
the  length  of  legs  and  their  muscularity  over  former  states.  Gre- 
cian statuary  shows  the  calf  muscle  but  little  developed  as  com- 
pared with  the  modern  condition,  and  so  a  very  few  centuries 
have  added  size  to  this  part.  Spencer  says  the  jaws  of  savages 
are  larger  through  eating  coarse  and  uncooked  food.  The  "high 
cheek  bones"  of  some  individuals  can  be  readily  referred  to  the 
jaw  bone  muscle  having  undergone  reduction  in  size,  as  when 
cooked  food  was  more  largely  used  and  strong  muscles  were  less 
needed,  while  the  bony  prominence  known  as  the  malar,  on  the 
cheek,  had  not  diminshed  in  size  as  did  the  associated  muscle. 
The  skin  on  the  soles  of  infants'  feet  are  thicker  than  elsewhere 
due  to  a  long  series  of  generations  of  pressure,  while  hardness  is 
developed  on  animals  in  different  parts  according  to  mechani- 
cal use.  Corns  and  callosities  are  of  this  nature  and  are  quite  vari- 
able. The  change  of  environment  may  not  only  cause  variability 
but  a  change  that  will  create  species  or  families  very  different 
from  the  ancestral.  In  great  sea  depths  are  blind  and  other  fishes 
with  phosphorescent  organs  that  give  out  light,  and  they  also  have 
enormous  stomachs.  Soft  and  flabby  and  often  with  starting 
eyes,  when  they  accidentally  come  to  the  sea  surface,  at  their  usual 
levels  they  ai*e  compact.  Deep  sea  fish  certainly  live  at  a  depth 
of  2,750  fathoms.  Cave  fishes  are  also  found  to  have  lost  the  use 
of  their  eyes,  and  members  of  the  same  family  are  marine,  and 
among  the  latter  are  two  rare  species  found  at  great  depths  in  the 
southern  oceans  which  are  also  completely  blind  and  are  provided 
with  phosphorescent  organs.  There  is  a  ribbon  fish  of  the  deep 
sea  and  a  "frost  fish"  which  is  said  to  commit  suicide  by  strand- 
ing itself  on  shore.  A  phosphorescent  sardine  lives  in  great 
depths  and  ascends  to  the  sea  surface  at  night  only.  Their  phos- 
phorescence serves  to  guide  such  fishes  and  to  attract  prey  as  the 


EVOLUTION.  Ill 

torch  does  for  the  fisherman.  Rudimentary  parts  occur  in  animals 
through  disuse.  For  instance,  man  has  three  Uttle  muscles  at- 
tached to  his  external  ear  that  are  of  no  use  to  him,  but  in  apes 
^nd  other  forms  with  movable  ears  these  muscles  serve  to  move 
the  ear  upward,  backward  and  forward.  A  slender  muscle  along- 
side of  the  calf  of  the  leg  is  so  useless  that  its  tendon  hangs  un- 
attached, while  it  was  of  considerable  importance  in  lower  forms 
as  an  aid  in  climbing  trees  by  contracting  the  foot  like  a  hand 
clasping.  Chickens  have  this  plantaris  muscle  well  developed  to 
enable  them  to  roost.  Cows  and  similar  ruminants,  or  animals 
that  chew  the  cud,  have  front  incisor  teeth  under  their  gums 
that  never  appear,  and  this  indicates  that  they  descended  from 
ancestors  which  had  front  teeth.  Whales  have  quite  rudimentary 
teeth  that  are  never  cut,  and  from  this  fact  and  others  it  is  known 
that  whales  come  from  a  land  animal  that  had  well  formed  teeth. 
Beneath  the  skin  of  a  snake-like  reptile  there  are  small  legs  that 
never  appear  on  the  surface.  The  only  possible  significance  of 
these  undeveloped  legs  would  be  in  their  having  been  useful  to 
the  progenitor  of  this  snake-like  reptile,  but  had  ceased  to  be  so 
in  the  descendant.  Just  as  active  brains  served  their  possessors 
to  amass  riches  which  handed  down  to  heirs  who  had  no  particu- 
lar use  for  brain  activity  served  merely  to  raise  incapable  idlers. 
Some  monkeys  have  no  thumbs  and  there  is  a  tendency  of  the 
last  joint  of  the  big  toe  of  orangs  to  be  shed,  the  toe  not  being 
so  useful  in  grasping  and  useless  parts  being  inclined  to  cease 
growth.  There  is  an  ape  called  the  proboscis  monkey  that  has  a 
ridiculously  large  nose  of  no  possible  use  to  him  and  a  positive 
deformity.  It  is  apparently  a  survival  from  some  source,  or  an 
extra  growth  such  as  corns  and  warts.  The  nipples  of  male  quad- 
rupeds are  instances  of  rudimentary  organs.  Monkeys  can  move 
their  scalps  up  and  down  and  a  few  human  beings  can  also  do 
so,  but  in  most  the  power  is  lost,  while  the  muscles  concerned  in 
the  movement  remain  in  an  undeveloped  state.  The  ear  muscles 
mentioned  are  as  rudimentary  and  useless  in  the  chimpanzee  and 
orang  as  they  are  in  man.  The  horse  has  a  sheet  muscle  called 
the  panniculus  carnosus,  enabling  it  to  shake  flies  oflf  its  body. 
Man  has  a  rudiment  of  this  same  muscle  around  his  neck  and  in 
general  parts  of  his  skin,  but  can  make  no  use  of  it.    The  anatom- 


112  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ical  name  for  it  is  platysma  myoides.  The  vermiform  appendix 
is  rudimentary  in  man,  affording  the  modern  fashionable  disorder 
called  appendicitis.  In  the  Kaola  this  branch  of  the  intestine  is 
three  times  as  long  as  the  body  and  is  also  long  in  vegetable 
feeders.  By  change  in  habits  this  appendix  becomes  shortened 
to  a  dangerously  small  rudiment  sometimes  causing  death.  It  is 
better  developed  in  women  than  in  men.  Mankind  differs  from 
other  primates  in  being  almost  naked.  Most  men  have  but  little 
hair  on  their  bodies  while  women  have  only  a  fine  down.  These 
hairs  are  a  rudiment  of  a  former  general  hairy  condition  which 
occasionally  recurs  in  some  people.  Downy  hairs  may  be  devel- 
oped into  stiff  long  coarse  hairs  near  an  inflamed  surface  and  long 
hairs  in  the  eyebrows  may  be  inherited,  resembling  those  of  the 
chimpanzee  and  macacus.  On  the  sixth  month  human  embryo 
there  is  a  fine  furry  covering  called  lanugo,  which  first  comes  on 
the  face  and  eyebrows  at  the  fifth  month  and  around  the  mouth, 
where  it  is  longer  than  on  the  head ;  arrest  of  hair  development 
with  teeth  abnormality  may  be  followed  by  lanugo  hair  returning 
in  the  adult.  The  back  wisdom  teeth  tend  to  become  rudimentary 
and  do  not  cut  earlier  than  the  17th  year  in  the  adult,  and  in  other 
ways  show  their  differences  from  the  other  teeth.  In  some  lower 
races  these  teeth  are  sound  and  resemble  the  others  in  regularity 
and  serviceability.  The  prostate  gland  at  the  base  of  the  bladder 
in  man  is  a  rudimentary  uterus  and  after  the  sixtieth  year  of  life 
occasionally  gives  great  trouble  and  distress  by  enlarging.  There 
is  great  variability  in  rudimentary  organs  because  being  useless 
they  are  no  longer  subject  to  natural  selection,  they  often  be- 
come entirely  suppressed,  though  by  reversion  they  may  reappear 
just  as  moles  on  the  body  are  reappearances  of  part  of  the  an- 
cestral monkey-like  skin  and  hair.  The  main  cause  of  rudiments 
is  disuse  at  a  period  when  the  organ  is  chiefly  used,  usually  at 
maturity;  a  diminished  nutrition,  as  by  a  cut  off  blood  supply, 
may  also  make  an  otherwise  active  organ  rudimentary.  Natural 
selection  by  developing  certain  parts  may  render  other  parts  less 
useful,  whereupon  they  are  liable  to  become  rudimentary.  Organs 
in  the  process  of  development  need  not  be  permanently  rudi- 
mentary, and  such  may  be  called  "nascent"  or  capable  of  develop- 
ment.   A  child's  organs  are  generally  in  this  formative  stage  and 


EVOLUTION. 


113 


the  majority  of  human  beings  may  be  said  to  have  nascent  brains, 
inasmuch  as  they  have  allowed  them  to  remain  unfilled  with 
knowledge,  and  unexercised  as  apparatus  of  thought.  The  Jap- 
anese also  could  be  considered  a  nascent  nation  until  the  United 
States  led  them  out  of  their  seclusion  and  gave  them  a  chance  to 
use  their  very  capable  but  latent,  unused,  abilities. 

The  similarity  of  pattern  between  the  hand  of  a  man  or  mon- 
key, the  foot  of  a  horse,  the  flipper  of  a  seal,  and  the  wing  of  a 
bat,  show  the  relationship  and  derivation  of  species  one  from  an- 
other. Mere  superficial  inspection  or  a  careless  glance  will  not 
enable  these  likenesses  to  be  seen,  but  a  very  little  study  of  the 
internal  parts  of  these  appendages  will  convince  you  that  they  are 
built  upon  a  single  plan.  But  still  more  striking  are  the  resem- 
blances between  the  unborn  young  of  the  man,  dog,  seal,  bat, 
reptile,  bird  and  fish,  so  that  at  certain  stages  these  embryos  can 
hardly  be  told  one  from  the  other. 

Ernst  Hgeckel  traces  the  evolution  of  plants  from  the  lowest 
formation  to  the  highest  during  the  geological  periods  called 
Laurentian,  Devonian,  Coal,  Permian  and  Triassic,  3.s  furnishiiig 
respectively  the  simple  to  the  complex  growths  of  vegetation 
known  as  algcie,  mosses,  ferns,  conifers,  and  flowering  plants.  In 
his  very  interesting  History  of  Creation  he  also  gives  an  account 
of  the  animals  in  their  geological  succession  from  the  oldest  form- 
ations of  the  earth's  surface  to  the  more  recent.  Thus  the  vast 
multitude  of  back-boneless  animals  date  from  the  Laurentian 
period ;  the  Cambrian  furnishes  the  headless  animals,  the  Acrania, 
a  step  higher ;  the  Silurian  age  gave  us  eels,  sharks,  ganoids ;  the 
Devonian  brought  the  bony  fishes,  the  amphioxus  or  'iancelet" 
is  found  to  date  from  the  Coal  period ; '  during  the  Permian  the 
reptiles  appeared,  and  some  of  them  developed  into  birds  in  the 
Triassic  epoch,  while  in  the  Jurassic  there  dawned  upon  the 
higher  animal  life  the  great  division  of  mammalia. 

The  growth  of  the  plant  from  the  seed  and  of  the  animal  from 
the  egg  is  an  evolutionary  process  and  is  technically  called  onto- 
geny or  individual  development,  and  the  evolution  of  a  higher 
form  of  existence  from  a  lower  form,  whether  plants  or  animals, 
is  called  phylogeny.  Ontogeny  or  the  individual  growth  is  a 
rapid,  brief  copying,  in  a  few  months  or  years,  of  phylogeny,  or 


114  "^"^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  history  of  what  has  taken  place  through  sometimes  millions 
of  years,  in  the  lifting  of  the  higher  from  the  lower  kind  of  plant 
or  animal. 

Heredity,  which  transmits  like  peculiarities,  and  adaptation  or 
nutrition,  in  the  environment  or  surroundings  most  suitable  to 
afford  such  nutrition,  are  strong  factors  in  this  building  up  pro- 
cess both  for  the  i'udividual  and  the  race.  One  of  the  often  used 
questions  intended  to  confuse  the  evolutionist  was :  ''If  man 
descended  from  monkeys  what  has  become  of  the  tail?"  No 
claim  is  made  that  man  is  descended  from  monkeys  by  any  well 
informed  evolutionist.  That  both  the  monkey  and  man  come 
from  similar  ancestry  is  all  that  can  be  properly  claimed,  and  as 
to  the  tails,  the  four  higher  apes,  namely,  the  chimpanzee,  orang, 
gibbon  and  gorilla,  have  no  tails,  neither  has  the  Barbary  macaque 
which  is  a  much  lower  animal,  and  by  way  of  return  to  an  orig- 
inal condition  it  occasionally  happens  that  the  little  bones  called 
the  coccxy,  at  the  end  of  the  spine  of  man  develop  into  a  well- 
defined  tail.  This  Barbary  macaque  or  magot  is  the  pithecus  of 
the  ancients,'  described  by  Aristotle.  It  was  dissected  by  Galen 
and  threw  light  upon  human  anatomy,  and  from  it  came  the 
knowledge  of  anatomy  secured  by  the  Greeks.  The  whole  sub- 
ject of  why  some  monkeys  have  tails  and  others  have  none,  and 
why  some  tails  are  short  and  others  are  long  is  enveloped  in  great 
obscurity.  All  monkeys  that  swing  by  their  tails  are  American. 
This  ability  to  grasp  limbs  by  the  caudal  appendage  is  called  pre- 
hensile, so  that  old  world  monkeys  do  not  have  prehensile  tails 
while  the  new  world  monkeys  own  them.  But  monkeys  are  not 
the  only  animals  thus  provided,  for  two  lizard  species  from 
Jamaica  and  Columbia  also  have  prehensile  tails.  The  various 
kinds  of  monkey's  tails  are  classed  as  prehensile,  drooping,  curl- 
ing over  the  body,  bushy  like  the  squirrel,  short  like  the  pig,  lion- 
tailed,  and  no  tail,  as  in  the  higher  apes  and  macaque.  Darwin 
remarks  that  when  the  beard  of  man  or  monkeys  differs  from  the 
hair  of  the  head  the  beard  will  be  lighter  in  color,"*  and  quotes  Cat- 
lin's  estimate  of  eighteen  out  of  twenty  North  American  Indians 
being  beardless,  and  when  there  is  neglect  to  pluck  the  hairs  at 

*  Descent  of  Man,  p.  304. 


EVOLUTION. 


115 


puberty  a  soft  beard  may  appear  an  inch  or  two  inches  long.    In 
both  sexes  of  these  Indians  the  hair  of  the  head  is  long. 

Beards  are  quite  variable  in  different  races,  and  among  our- 
selves, and  the  different  kinds  of  beards  and  the  want  of  them 
Darwin  describes  at  length.^  Apes  and  monkeys  are  four-handed, 
that  is,  they  use  their  feet  to  grasp  with  and  to  climb  trees,  and  this 
ability  of  clutching  with  the  feet  is  seen  in  young  human  infants 
and  in  some  adults  of  low  races,  like  the  Cingalese.  Monkeys  do 
not  hibernate  but  are  active  during  all  seasons ;  some  of  them  are 
expert  swimmers.  In  some  the  thumb  is  missing,  the  hand  of  the 
ateles  being  used  as  a  hook  to  swing  from  trees ;  the  thumb  has 
become  useless  and  this  species  sometimes  conveys  food  to  its 
mouth  with  its  tail.  The  long  arms  of  the  orang  are  adaptations 
to  the  necessity  for  tree  climbing,  just  as  the  longer  legs  of  man 
are  better  suited  to  life  on  the  ground.  All  the  monkeys  have 
two  breasts  like  the  human  except  the  aye-aye  of  Madagascar, 
and  the  teeth  are  the  same  in  man  and  monkeys.  The  man-like 
apes  and  the  Siamang  have  hair  on  the  forearm  that  runs  toward 
the  elbow  as  it  does  in  man,  and  it  has  been  suggested  that  the 
dripping  of  rain  from,  the  elbow  point  through  vast  ages  finally 
iixed  the  direction  of  these  hairs.  The  calves  of  the  legs  are  more 
developed  in  the  gorilla  than  in  any  of  the  other  man-like  apes. 
Generally  speaking  there  is  a  greater  relative  size  of  the  brain  and 
that  part  of  the  skull  which  contains  it,  in  the  monkeys  than  in 
other  animals,  but  the  lower  monkeys  are  not  equal  in  intelligence 
to  the  higher  flesh  eating  animals.  The  marked  differences  of 
appearance  between  the  monkeys  are  associated  with  correspond- 
ing mental  differences.  The  larger  species'  resemblance  to  man 
is  more  marked  in  the  young  than  in  the  adult,  while  the  females 
have  more  human  characteristics  than  the  male.  This  is  due  to 
the  general  resemblance  between  all  the  higher  apes  and  the 
human  infant,  changing  somewhat  with  age,  and  the  females  of 
all  species  retaining  youthful  peculiarities. 

The  most  intelligent  of  all  apes  is  the  chimpanzee,  specimens 
of  which  have  been  exhibited  at  times  in  our  larger  cities,  but 
they  do  not  live  many  years  in  captivity.  They  sleep  in  trees 
and  make  a  covering  over  their  heads  like  a  hut  to  shelter  them 

"  Op.  Cit.  p.  306. 


Il6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

from  rain.  They  do  not  eat  flesh  but  feed  on  nuts  and  other 
fruits.  They  have  been  observed  sitting  around  abandoned  camp 
fires  which  they  do  not  know  enough  to  replenish.  Old  accounts 
made  them  very  hostile  to  negroes  who  travel  in  the  same  forests,. 
and  their  strength  was  said  to  be  very  great.  Africans  claimed 
that  troops  of  chimpanzees  chased  and  beat  elephants  with  their 
fists  and  sticks.  In  captivity  they  are  gentle,  intelligent  and  affec- 
tionate, and  soon  learn  to  feed  themselves  with  spoon,  glass  or 
cup,  and  are  quite  playful.  One  of  them  called  negroes  ''bun,, 
bun,  bim."  They  sleep  upon  their  backs  and  in  many  other  re- 
spects resemble  human  beings. 

Haeckel  derives  all  apes  from  a  half-ape  form,  and  from  these 
developed  the  flap-tailed,  flat-nosed  apes,  from  whom  came  the 
silky  kind  and  the  clutch-tailed  American  apes,  which  ended  that 
particular  bough  of  the  family  tree.  The  tailed  narrow-nosed 
apes  gave  origin  to  the  cynocephalus  baboon  on  one  finished 
branch  and  the  cercopithecus  on  another  branch.  A  more  impor- 
tant offshoot  between  these  two  afforded  the  tail  apes  on  one  twig 
and  the  nose  apes  on  another,  and  from  these  tailed  narrow-nosed 
apes  sprung  the  important  anthropoids  or  man-like  apes,  from 
which  came  the  African  man-like  chimpanzee  and  gorilla  at  the 
highest  end  of  that  particular  branch,  while  a  parallel  branch 
divides  into  the  gibbon  and  orang,  a  totally  distinct  branch  orig- 
inated the  ape-like  speechless  man,  and  this  branch  split  into  two 
divisions  according  to  Haeckel's  classification  of  the  human  family 
into  straight-haired  and  woolly-haired  races  of  men. 

Both  man  and  the  man-like  apes  are  thus  regarded  as  diverg- 
ing branches  descended  from  a  common  ancestor  which  has  long 
since  become  extinct.  This  ancestor  or  half-ape  was  as  unlike  any 
living  ape-like  animal  as  the  apes  of  today  are  unlike  men.  Nor 
is  it  required  that  we  should  believe  our  progenitors  to  have  been 
any  single  set  of  half-apes  or  lemurs.  Many  such  lemurs  sim- 
ilarly and  favorably  situated  may  at  the  same  time  or  through 
long  separate  periods  of  time,  have  become  the  parents  of  other 
ape-like  forms  which  developed  the  different  races  of  men,  and 
these  tribes  could  also  have  appeared  separately  in  regions  far 
distant  from  one  another  without  necessarily  owning  a  common 
origin  or  having  emigrated  from  some  far  off  land.    Like  causes 


EVOLUTION.  117 

produce  like  effects  and  it  is  simpler  to  conceive  of  man  appear- 
ing in  Australia,  Africa,  Europe  and  Asia  independently,  devel- 
oped from  separate  ancestry,  even  though  in  later  ages  crossings 
occurred  and  the  races  ceased  to  be  distinct. 

There  is  a  white  race  of  lemurs  in  the  moist  regions  of  Mada- 
gascar and  a  black  race  in  the  dry  regions.  Milne-Edwards  and 
Grandidier  mentioned  the  remarkable  diversity  of  races  and  spe- 
cies of  different  lemurs,  so  that  a  small  river  may  separate  mark- 
edly different  kinds  of  these  half-apes.  The  distribution  in  France 
and  England  in  the  early  part  of  the  Tertiary  of  fossil  lemurs  indi- 
cates the  prevalence  in  those  countries  of  a  tropical  or  sub-tropi- 
cal climate  at  that  time.  Fossil  gibbons  are  found  in  the  fresh 
water  strata  belonging  to  the  middle  portion  of  the  Tertiary  per- 
iod in  France  and  Switzerland.  So  that  part  of  Europe  must 
have  had  a  hot,  moist  climate  like  that  of  the  Malay  archipelago 
of  the  present  day.  Other  kinds  of  monkey  fossils  are  abundant 
in  Europe  later  in  the  Tertiary,  though  there  are  no  gibbons  after 
the  Miocene  division.  Fossil  apes  are  not  found  further  back 
than  the  Miocene  age,  but  man-like  apes  are  found  in  the  Miocene 
Tocks. 

The  chimpanzee  of  Africa  was  considered  the  highest  in  intel- 
ligence of  the  four  higher  apes,  but  Haeckel  in  his  later  researches 
announces  the  gibbon  of  Java  as  superior  to  all  apes  and  regards 
it  as  the  nearest  living  relative  of  man  among  the  animals.  He 
speaks  of  it  as  man's  first  cousin.  In  1866  Haeckel  declared  that 
man  was  descended  from  an  ape-like  animal  and  described  a  miss- 
ing link  in  the  chain  of  evolution,  which  he  named  pithecanthro- 
pus. In  1894  the  remains  of  this  creature  were  discovered  by  Dr. 
Dubois  in  Java,  who  named  it  pithecanthropus  erectus.  There 
•existed  once  an  Asiatic  ape,  now  extinct,  who  became  the  pro- 
genitor of  pithecanthropus,  the  gibbon  and  the  orang  outang. 
The  descendants  of  pithecanthropus  evolved  into  man,  but  the 
gibbon  remained  as  he  was.  He  seems  a  sad  animal,  timivl,  mel- 
ancholy and  intelligent,  fond  of  children,  with  a  strong  tendency 
to  jealousy  and  all  the  other  human  emotions.  The  Java  speci- 
men is  called  Hylobates  leuciscus. 

The  great  collection  of  islands  south  and  southeast  of  Asia 
called  the  Indian  or  Malay  archipelago  includes  the  large  islands 


Il8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND, 

of  Java,  Sumatra  and  Borneo.  It  was  in  Java  that  Dr.  Dubois 
found  the  remains  of  pithecanthropus  erectus,  a  missing  Hnk,  and 
judging  from  the  geological  formation  in  which  the  bones  were 
found  the  pithecanthropus  is  thought  to  have  lived  about  270,000 
years  ago.  These  islands  also  contain  the  only  existing  families 
of  the  Asiatic  man-like  apes,  the  orang  and  gibbon.  This  near 
relative  of  ours  is  pleasanter  in  manners  than  are  the  other  high 
apes^.  Whether  these  islands  of  the  Malay  archipelago  were  for- 
merly connected  with  the  main  land  or  not  it  appears  that  this 
vicinity  was  favorable  to  the  development  of  higher  animal  life. 
There  is  a  stretch  of  tropical  forest  from  Borneo  and  the  Malay 
peninsula  to  the  Himalaya  mountains,  and  this  region  suggests 
itself  favorably  as  the  home  of  the  primitive  ape-man  who  de- 
scended from  the  pithecanthropus  of  Java.  Wallace  shows  that 
a  large  part  of  this  region  of  southeastern  Asia  with  the  islands  of 
the  Indian  Ocean  affords  abundance  of  the  same  kinds  of  ani- 
mals. Other  parts  of  the  world  may  have  been  favorable  to  the 
evolution  of  men-like  apes  and  varieties  of  ape-like  men,  but  the 
best  adapted  place  on  the  earth's  surface  appeared  to  have  been 
the  Himalaya  range  from  southeast  to  northwest  and  the  high 
plateaus  of  Thibet  and  the  plains  southwest  of  the  Hindn-Kush 
mountains  near  the  northwest  part  of  the  Himalayas.  Darwin 
places  the  divergence  of  man  from  the  catarrhine,  sharp  or  narrow- 
nosed  apes  as  occurring  in  the  Eocene  period  in  a  hot  country. 
The  sadness  and  timidity  of  the  gibbon  may  be  ascribed  partly  to 
its  gloomy  forest  life  and  being  surrounded  by  hosts  of  fierce  ani- 
mals from  whom  it  must  protect  itself,  and  added  to  this  the 
violent  convulsions  of  nature  frequent  in  its  early  times  made  this 
lower  part  of  Asia  an  uncomfortable  district.  The  proboscis  mon- 
key is  very  likely  a  creature  of  sexual  selection.  Ideas  of  beauty 
vary  even  among  men  and  a  startlingly  large  nose  may  have  won 
attention  and  preference  of  the  sexes  so  that  mating  with  the  less 
prominent  nosed  apes  went  out  of  fashion  among  them  until 
that  species  was  well  founded  and  achieved  its  greatest  and  only 
distinction,  for  it  amounts  to  little  in  other  respects.  But  with 
pithecanthropus  a  less  prominent  nose  coupled  with  alertness  was 
more  in  favor  and  so  both  natural  and  sexual  selection  devel- 
oped along  the  intellectual  line  these  earliest  progenitors  of  man. 


EVOLUTION.  119 

A  solemn  old  rascal  is  the  sacred  monkey  of  India,  the  Hanu- 
man,  Hulman,  named  by  Cuvier,  Semnopithecus  entellus.  The 
Hindoos  credit  it  with  all  sorts  of  impossible  powers,  a  kind  of 
Perseus  and  Prometheus  in  one,  as  it  is  said  to  have  delivered  a 
goddess  from  a  giant's  captivity  and  to  have  presented  the  mango 
to  India.  The  pious  Hindoo  never  molests  it  but  allows  it  the 
run  of  the  garden  and  house  where  it  destroys  to  its  heart's  con- 
tent. English  officers  feel  compelled  to  suppress  the  nuisance 
and  intelligent  natives  approve  of  so  doing,  but  the  pious  would 
as  soon  kill  a  human  being  as  one  of  these  sacred  animals. 

Wild  animals  that  avoid  mixing  will  often,  when  domesti- 
cated, cross,  as  can  be  observed  when  the  various  kinds  of  dogs 
mingle,  the  original  Eskimo  dog  being  merely  an  arctic  wolf, 
the  Indian  dog  a  prairie  wolf,  the  Nubian  a  jackal,  the  ancient 
lake  dwellers  also  domesticating  that  animal.  The  horse  of  Asia 
and  Europe  plainly  arose  separately  from  the  American  horse,  the 
fossil  evidence  showing  that  in  the  west  territories  of  the  United 
States  the  horse  began  as  an  animal  the  size  of  a  cat,  remains  of 
which  are  found  in  the  Wasatch  beds  of  Eocene  times.  Later  on 
mesohippus  attained  the  size  of  a  sheep,  the  next  growth,  pro- 
tohippus,  had  a  skeleton  closely  like  that  of  the  present  horse, 
into  which  protohippus  grew  in  Pliocene  tirpes  when  there  was 
no  man  to  ride  him.  All  the  American  horses  died  off  before  the 
European  stock  came  over.  The  few  herds  of  wild  horses  in  New 
]\Iexico  and  that  vicinity  descended  from  cavalry  animals  lost 
by  Cortez  and  later  Spaniards  in  Mexico.  Professor  E.  D.  Cope 
of  Philadelphia  found  the  earliest  five-toed  horse  progenitor  of 
the  later  kinds,  and  a  remarkable  thing  about  it  was  that  it  was  a 
flesh  eater,  so  circumstances  must  have  compelled  the  recent  horse 
to  subsist  upon  grass.  As  to  the  simultaneous  or  rather  independ- 
ent evolution  of  life  in  far  distant  parts,  though  there  may  be  a 
remarkable  sameness  of  appearance  of  these  separate  forms,  there 
is  found  the  same  variety  of  lichen  in  the  antarctic  as  in  the  arctic 
regions  and  it  is  more  likely  that  they  developed  from  similar 
than  from  the  same  causes. 

One  can  picture  to  himself  mountains  thrust  up  from  a  hot  sea 
with  tropical  forms  of  both  plants  and  animals  becoming  arctic 
forms  as  they  came  out  of  the  ocean  and  climbed  the  ranges 


120  THE    EVOLUTION    OE    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

through  ages  measured  by  many  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years, 
certainly  time  enough  for  some  sort  of  changes  to  occur,  even 
though  the  change  were  from  crawHng  to  flying  Hzards  and  these 
finally  into  birds,  the  mountain  sides  affording  all  sorts  of  induce- 
ment and  opportunity  for  such  metamorphosis  and  the  fossils 
found  in  rocks  proving  that  such  things  did  occur.  So  gradually 
hot  blooded  animals  appeared  from  cold  blooded  ancestry ;  the 
reptiles  being  furnished  exterior  heat  and  such  animals  as  were 
able  to  furnish  their  own  caloric  internally  were  able  to  do  more 
and  to  develop  widely  and  higher  in  the  animal  and  mental  scales, 
until  hot  blooded  birds  soar  through  the  clouds  and  hot  blooded 
man  scaled  the  glaciers  and  became  master  of  the  world,  though 
at  the  cost  of  much  effort  and  multitudes  of  slain  marking  his 
temporary  failures.  The  mountain  sides  have  seen  the  four- 
footed  progenitors  of  man,  the  man-like  ape  and  the  ape-like  man 
next  in  descent,  speechless  animal  man  finally  learning  to  talk 
and  to  use  better  and  still  better  tools  and  to  make  his  surround- 
ings better  as  his  mind  developed,  and  all  this  took  vast  periods 
of  time,  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years.  The  remains  of  an 
ancient  civilization  scattered  over  the  west  coast  of  South  Amer- 
ica, the  Isthmus  and  Mexico  point  to  Honduras,  Yucatan  and 
Columbia  as  centers  of  such  life,  though  its  remoter  source  was 
in  mountain  ranges  more  or  less  adjacent,  the  Andes ;  the  high 
plains  of  Thibet  doubtless  were  the  abode  of  the  fathers  of  the 
Aryans  who  slowly  ventured  down  into  the  Oxus  valley  as  the 
hot  sea  went  down  and  the  melting  glaciers  made  a  river  far 
wider  than  any  we  know  of  today,  the  sea  still  falling  leaves  fer- 
tile plains  for  thousands  of  years  upon  which  these  Aryans 
browse  their  flocks,  but  finally  the  crumbling  mountains  made  so 
much  sand  that  blows  over  the  grassy  plains  and  forms  the  des- 
erts, the  inhabitants  are  compelled  to  leave,  and  so  Europe  came 
to  be  settled,  but  not  wholly  from  that  people.  To  the  south 
there  were  also  highlands  near  Armenia  where  the  stock  proba- 
bly originated  from  which  came  many  of  the  subsequent  dwellers 
in  the  great  Mesopotamian  valley,  with  a  history  very  like  that 
of  the  Oxus  region,  the  Euphrates  filling  the  wide  expanse  and 
the  Semites  coming  down  from  where  their  legends  locate  their 
paradise,  the  Persian  plateaux,  the  waters  going  farther,  with 


EVOLUTION.  12  1 

,  an  occasional  return,  affording  the  legend  of  the  flood ;  finally 
two  rivers,  the  Tigris  and  Euphrates,  developing  from  the  one 
wide  one  as  the  glaciers  melted  and  the  valleys  became  fertile, 
and  eventually  bad  times,  through  climatic  and  soil  changes  and 
eternal  fights  with  the  wild  Kurds,  made  Babylonia  too  poor  a 
place  to  live  in,  so  its  folk  scattered  elsewhere.  These  Aryans 
and  Semites  have  made  all  the  important  history  of  the  world, 
as  far  as  civilization,  with  which  we  are  familiar,  is  concerned. 
Just  so  the  ancient  great  Ural  mountains  extending  northward  to 
the  Arctic  ocean  could  have  developed  the  Tartars  along  the  Ural 
river  as  the  Caspian  became  an  inland  sea  from  the  receding  of 
the  primeval  general  ocean,  the  Altai  range  north  of  China  bring- 
ing up  the  Mongols,  with  whom  the  Tartars  mixed  to  afford  the 
later  Ural-Altain  people,  who  bothered  the  Aryans  and  Semites 
to  the  south  so  much. 

The  Norwegian  ranges  and  some  others  may  have  similarly- 
seen  the  appearance  of  indigenous  men,  but  the  probabilities  are 
that  the  Aryans  killed  them  off,  and  it  seems  likely  that  other 
Asiatics  than  Aryans  preceded  and  mixed  with  these  aborigines, 
but  they  shared  the  same  fate  when  these  masterful  travelers 
from  the  Oxus  put  in  an  appearance.  They  were  the  fittest  to 
survive. 

The  Atlas  and  Abyssinian  mountains  might  just  as  readily  have 
begun  some  of  the  African  races,  and  also  ranges  farther  south 
could  have  raised  Hottentots  and  other  blacks,  the  subsequent 
intermarriages  of  races  about  the  Mediterranean  accounting  for 
varieties  of  complexions.  Furthermore,  some  of  the  less  fav- 
ored races  may  not  have  developed  until  their  ancestral  forms 
had  come  down  into  forests  or  plains  at  low  altitudes,  which  may 
account  for  darker  complexions  in  some  cases.  The  high  cold 
ranges  affording  the  more  intelligent  white  races,  the  hot  moist 
forests  other  peoples  in  some  instances. 

Darwin^  ascribes  the  greater  size,  strength,  courage,  pugnacity 
and  even  energy  of  man  as  compared  with  the  same  qualities  in 
women  to  primitive  times.  A  frequent  disposition  of  man  to  be 
willing  to  fight  to  the  death  for  the  woman  he  loves  can  be  re- 
ferred back  to  such  early  days,  and  the  so-called  chivalry  of  the 

« Descent  of  Man,  Ch.  XX.,  pt.  II. 


122  THE    EVOLUTION    OF.  MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

middle  ages  was  thus  aroused  and  survives  today  in  a  less  bom- 
bastic and  otherwise  improved  form.  Beards  Darwin  regards  as 
appendages  transmitted  to  males  by  sexual  selection  as  the  sweeter 
voices  of  women  were  similarly  transmitted  with  their  denuda- 
tion of  hair. 

Primitive  times  favored  sexual  development  more  than  recent 
days  because  man  was  guided  then  more  by  instinctive  passions 
and  less  by  foresight  and  reason.  Darwin  concludes  that  of  all 
the  causes  which  have  led  to  the  differences  in  external  appear- 
ance between  the  races  of  man  and  to  a  certan  extent  between 
man  and  the  lower  animals  sexual  selection  has  been  by  far  the 
most  efficient.  Carl  Vogt^  vigorously  discusses  the  claims  of  the 
monogenists,  or  those  who  believe  that  different  types  have  arisen 
from  a  single  individual,  as  in  the  wrong,  that  different  continents 
may  have  simultaneously  produced  representatives  or  similar  spe- 
cies, and  that  we  should  not  accept  a  single  center  of  creation  for 
all  animals. 

Wallace^  accepts  Croll's  hypothesis  that  the  glacial  period 
began  about  200,000  years  ago  and  adopts  Sir  Wm.  Thompson's 
conclusion  that  the  crust  of  the  earth  cannot  have  been  solidified 
much  longer  than  a  hundred  million  years  and  that  Prof.  Haugh- 
ton's  estimate  of  the  time  required  to  produce  the  thickness  of  the 
stratified  rocks  of  the  globe,  177,200  feet,  at  the  present  rate  of 
denudation  and  deposition  is  only  twenty-eight  million  years. 
Four  million  years  can  be  assigned  to  the  Tertiary  epoch  and  six- 
teen million  for  the  time  elapsed  since  the  Cambrian,  according 
to  Lyell,  or  sixty  million,  according  to  Dana.  The  twenty-eight 
million  arrived  at  from  the  rate  of  denudation  and  deposition  is 
midway  between  these. 

Wallace  considers  the  present  climate  as  exceptionally  stable 
and  that  species  are  also  stable  in  consequence.  He  discards  the 
well-nigh  limitless  geological  periods  and  far  fetched  inter-con- 
tinental bridges  and  temporary  islands  and  the  hypothetical  Lem- 
uria  of  Hseckel,  and  inclines  to  regard  the  present  continents  and 
ocean  basins  as  permanent.  American  geologists  are  familiar 
with  the  idea  of  the  origin  of  the  North  American  continent  from 

^  Westermann's  Monatshefte,  1881. 
''Island  Life,  1881. 


EVOLUTION.  123 

the  Laurentian  nucleus  and  its  gradual  building  up  by  sediments 
derived  from  the  waste  of  its  own  rocks,  and  keeping  pace  with  it 
was  the  evolution  of  its  flora  and  fauna  which  borrowed  nothing 
from  the  old  world,  though  South  America  may  have  exchanged 
some  forms.  It  was  not  till  the  Tertiary  that  the  American  and 
Asiatic  continents  nearly  met,  so  that  interchanges  of  forms  were 
slight,  if  any. 

Simultaneously  with  the  growth  of  North  and  South  America 
the  Europeo-Asiatic,  African  and  Australian  continents  are  pre- 
sumed to  have  developed  with  their  characteristic  assemblages  of 
plants  and  animals. 

The  American  continent  had  its  own  marsupials,  tapirs,  cats,. 
dogs,  horses,  camels  and  monkeys,  independent  of  those  arising 
in  Europe  and  Asia ;  and  Cope^  regards  this  independent  evolu- 
tion idea  of  Wallace  and  Vogt  as  explaining  matters  simply, 
which  otherwise  could  not  be  explained.  During  the  glacial 
period  when  the  American  and  Asiatic  continents  approached 
each  other  there  may  have  been  migration  and  interchanges, 
which  render  the  life  in  the  northern  hemisphere  so  different  in 
the  Ouarternary  from  that  of  the  Tertiary.  With  the  modern 
facilities  for  mixing  of  species  and  the  driving  out  of  the  unfit- 
test  there  are  rapidly  occurring  extinctions,  as  of  the  buffalo  in 
America,  as  the  aurochs  was  driveft  from  Asia  and  Europe.  A 
remnant  of  the  British  black  rat,  almost  entirely  exterminated 
during  the  last  hundred  years  by  the  brown  Norwegian  rat,  is 
carefully  protected  and  preserved  on  an  estate  at  Greenlees,  Mont- 
gomery. Natural  selection  is  in  favor  of  the  sparrows  and  against 
the  survival  of  the  wrens,  who  are  driven  away  by  the  sparrows.^* 
There  is  a  natural  rotation  of  crops  of  forest  trees  due  to  the  soil 
being  successively  better  adapted  with  the  climate  and  the  presence 
of  certain  seeds  to  the  growth  and  propagation  of  the  successive 
sorts,  the  oak  following  the  pine,  so  that  alternate  sections  of  the 
Northern  Pacific  present  the  two  kinds  of  forests,  due  to  the 
oak  springing  up  whei'e  the  pines  had  been  cut  away.^^  Wallace^^ 

*  American  Naturalist,  April,  1881. 

"  T.  Mcllwraith,  American  Naturalist,  Aug.,  1883,  p.  894. 

"  American  Naturalist,  1886,  p.  521. 

"  Natural  Selection. 


124  ^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

regards  the  development  of  the  human  race  under  the  law  of  nat- 
ural selection  and  refers  to  the  influence  of  external  nature  in  the 
growth  of  the  human  mind,  whereby  the  inhabitants  of  the  tem- 
perate regions  are  superior  to  those  of  hotter  countries  and  all 
changes  for  the  better  coming  from  the  north.  He  refers  to  this 
matter  of  natural  selection  operating  in  the  extinction  of  lower 
races,  and  in  originating  the  races  of  men ;  he  discusses  its  bear- 
ing upon  antiquity,  as  the  cause  of  man's  dignity  and  supremacy. 
Wallace  gives  his  view  of  the  brain  of  the  savage,  his  range  of 
intellect,  the  origin  of  his  moral  sense,  of  consciousness,  and 
surveys  the  antiquity  and  origin  of  man. 

The  Chinese  are  capable  of  some  instruction  w^hen  young, 
but  their  brains  appear  to  crystalize  as  a  survival  of  conditions 
common  to  their  very  remote  ancestry,  and  no  further  progress 
can  be  made  with  them.  The  Japanese  are  immeasurably  the 
superior  of  the  Chinese. 

In  Syria  they  still  plow  with  the  same  kind  of  crooked  stick 
of  prehistoric  days,  they  thrash  grain  by  hoofed  animals  walk-'ng 
on  it  and  winnow  by  tossing  the  grain  in  the  air  to  let  tke  i'ind 
blow  the  chaff  away,  and  yet  barbarous,  ill-smelling,  superstitious, 
uncomfortable,  picturesque  and  dirty  old  Syria  is  regarded  as 
holy  ground  by  civilized  people.  Encouragement  of  extensive 
pilgrimages  to  the  land  of  lepers,  liars,  thieves,  superstitions  and 
imwashed,  may  do  away  with  some  of  this  time-honored  rev- 
erence. By  survival  we  have  the  absurdity  of  ancient  hatred  as 
between  Celt  and  Saxon  continued  even  after  the  Celt  has  be- 
come in  many  cases  Saxon  and  the  Saxon  being  Celt,  exchang- 
ing their  racial  hatreds  also  under  the  mistake  of  the  Saxon 
often  being  Celtic  and  the  Celt  being  Saxon.  Touching  the  hat 
is  a  survival  of  the  former  custom  of  lifting  the  hat.  The  wed- 
ding ring  is  a  relic  of  purchase,  and  bracelets  survive  from  the 
manacles  of  female  slaves.  Louis  Napoleon  succeeded  because 
other  national  parties  in  ,1849  were  quarreling,  and  they  adopted 
him  as  a  compromise,  because  they  thought  he  would  prove  im- 
becile or  a  mannikin,  and  from  the  hatred  of  the  legitimists,  Or- 
leanists,  Bonapartists  and  Socialists  grew  up  the  MacMahon 
control.  Seton-Thompson  remarks  that  every  animal  has  some 
great  strength  or  it  could  not  live,  and  some  great  weakness  or 


EVOLUTION. 


125 


the  others  could  not  Hve.  The  squirrel's  weakness  is  foolish  curi- 
osity, the  fox's  that  he  cannot  climb  a  tree,  and  the  foxes  made 
up  for  their  weakness  by  defter  play.  The  fox's  axioms  are; 
Never  sleep  on  your  straight  track.  Never  take  the  open  if  you 
can  take  the  cover.  Never  take  a  straight  trail  if  a  crooked  one 
will  do.  If  anything  is  strange  it  is  hostile,  and  human  babies 
are  frightened  by  strange  things,  so  they  have  likely  inherited  this 
trait  from  very  distant  animal  ancestry.  Little  foxes  instinctively 
fear  the  scent  of  man  without  knowing  why.  Dogs  when  water- 
baffled  run  up  and  down  both  banks  to  regain  the  scent.  Reason 
mingles  with  instinct  in  such  instances.  Animals  have  been 
known  to  commit  suicide  when  captured  and  to  destroy  their  off- 
spring when  they  cannot  release  them  from  the  trap. 

While  man  often  influences  the  disappearance  of  a  species  he  is 
as  frequently  unable  to  diminish  its  numbers,  as  in  the  case  of 
twelve  million  rabbit  skins  being  yearly  imported  from  New 
Zealand,  and  Australian  canneries  of  rabbits  are  increasing  and 
so  are  the  rabbits.  In  Argentina  the  rodent  coypu  was  killed  for 
its  fur  and  became  so  scarce  the  government  stopped  its  slaughter 
and  it  increased  rapidly  till  a  mysterious  disease  made  it  nearly 
extinct  again. 

Some  races  of  men  have  remained  apparently  unchanged  for 
ages,  preserving  their  original  savagery,  their  crude  arts  and  im- 
perfect implements,  their  tribal  customs  and  superstitions  from 
periods  probably  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  back.  The 
Turcomans  and  other  Asiatics  of  Turkestan  and  especially  the 
Kafristans  are  thus  primitive.  They  are  free  but  not  united  be- 
yond a  few  families,  they  have  no  recognized  leaders  but  occa- 
sionally defer  to  some  one  of  influence.  And  it  seems  anomalous 
that  free-born  Americans  should  ever  covet  or  glorify  the  condi- 
tions of  far  off  India,  but  the  Theosophists  and  Occultists  and 
similar  ignorant  and  foolish  fanatics  have  been  imposed  upon  by 
the  lies  of  their  teachers.  Hear  what  an  educated  Hindoo  said 
of  the  things  that  survive  today  in  his  country : 

Swami  Vivekananda,  after  a  trip  to  America  and  Europe, 
returned  to  India  and  told  his  people  some  unpleasant  truths  in 
"The  Indian  Mirror."  He  told  how  the  old  Vedic  religion  had  been 
defiled  by  the  low  races  that  accepted  Buddhism  until  it  became 


126  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

^'one  degraded  mass  of  superstition''  with  the  most  hideous  cere- 
monials, the  most  horrible,  the  most  obscene  books  that  human 
hands  ever  wrote,  the  most  bestial  forms  that  ever  passed  under 
the  name  of  religion.  He  told  them  that  they  were  physica-lly 
and  mentally  weak,  lazy,  selfish,  no  three  combining  without 
hatred,  jealous  of  one  another,  hopelessly  disorganized  'mobs 
fighting  one  another  for  centuries  whether  a  certain  mark  is  to 
be  placed  this  way  or  that,  writing  volumes  upon  volumes  on 
such  questions  as  whether  the  look  of  a  man  spoils  my  food  or 
not. 

The  ''Independent"  then  says,  **And  here  in  this  country  are 
mannish  women  and  womanish  men  looking  to  India  for  light 
where  this  man  who  knows  India  from  Hardwar  to  Cape  Cam- 
orin  sees  only  in  his  own  capitals  "the  most  rotten  superstition  in 
the  world." 

Millions  of  instances  of  such  survivals  could  be  cited  in  our 
apparel,  our  customs,  manners,  etc.  Earrings  are  survivals  from 
savagery,  and  the  waning  of  this  kind  of  decoration  promises 
that  radical  changes  will  evolve  in  the  dress  of  both  sexes.  A 
century  ago  the  male  was  as  gorgeous  with  gewgaws,  lace,  silks 
and  ribbons  as  a  modern  ball-room  belle,  and,  as  there  is  a  reason 
for  everything,  as  before  mentioned,  the  cause  of  the  growing 
modesty  of  man  in  this  respect  is  that  the  gentleman  found  him- 
self outdone  in  display  by  every  vulgar  fellow  who  could  com- 
mand a  fortune.  His  footman  aped  him  and  in  sheer  disgust  a 
more  modest  appearance  was  adopted  and  has  now  become  dis- 
tinctive of  the  gentleman,  while  ancient  costumes  and  gaudiness 
are  relegated  to  the  lackey.  Within  the  recollection  of  most  old 
folks  now  living  the  sleek  doeskins  and  broadcloth  of  our  grand- 
fathers and  fathers  have  been  discarded  because  butlers  and 
waiters  wore  them.  The  ladies  can  be  heard  resentfully  calling 
attention  to  the  peacock  silks  and  expensive  sealskins  of  the  cooks 
and  housemaids.  We  merely  copy  the  workings  of  all  nature  in 
these  particulars ;  learning  by  experience  that  richness  of  cos- 
tume is  no  evidence  for  or  against  the  worthiness  of  its  wearer. 
As  the  world  grows  older  it  grows  wiser  and  individuals  will 
come  to  be  appreciated  for  what  they  are,  not  for  what  they  pos- 
sess, and  this  is  one  species  of  social  evolution. 


EVOLUTION.  127 

There  are  survivals  in  ceremonies,  fashions,  habits,  dress,  or- 
naments, opinions,  notions  of  marriage,  property,  and  law.  The 
best  man  in  a  marriage  ceremony  today  survives  from  a  time 
when  the  bride  was  captured  by  the  groom  and  his  friends. 
Criminal  law  grew  out  of  private  vengeance,  only  the  state  is  now 
the  avenger.  The  public  prosecutor  stands  in  the  place  of  the 
avenger  and  often  he  has  the  ancient  grudge  against  the  prisoner, 
right  or  wrong.  Some  people  keep  up  the  savage  disfigurement 
of  tatooing.  Civilization  tends  to  suppress  ornament  altogether. 
As  Tyler  says,  the  unconscious  evolution  of  society  is  giving  place 
to  its  conscious  development. 

You  may  have  wondered  why  "off  and  nigh  horses"  are  on 
the  wrong  sides  as  you  sit  in  your  seat  to  drive  them,  but  when 
you  realize  that  the  terms  are  survivals  from  old  postilion  days 
when  the  ridden  wheel  horse  was  on  the  left  side  and  was  there- 
fore the  nigh  horse,  and  the  right  hand  horse  was  hence  the  off 
horse,  you  understand  that  your  right  hand  seat  in  the  wagon  has 
not  changed  the  old  names,  in  spite  of  their  inappropriateness 
now. 


CHAPTER  VI. 
HEREDITY  AND  DEGENERACY. 

From  many  Alpine  peaks  stream  out,  thousands  of  feet  in 
length,  what  are  known  as  cloud-banners.  They  seem  to  be  per- 
fectly steady,  even  though  a  strong  wind  may  be  blowing  over 
the  mountain  tops. 

''Why  is  the  cloud  not  blown  away?"  asks  Tyndall.  "It  is 
blown  away,"  he  answers;  ''its  permanence  is  only  apparent.  At 
one  end  it  is  incessantly  dissolved,  at  the  other  end  it  is  inces- 
santly renewed ;  supply  and  consumption  being  thus  equalized, 
the  cloud  appears  as  changeless  as  the  mountain  to  which  it  seems 
to  cling.  When  the  red  sun  of  the  evening  shines  upon  these 
cloud-streams,  they  resemble  vast  torches  with  their  flames  blown 
through  the  air." 

But  the  cloud  is  still  there,  new  vapor  is  condensed,  whitened, 
and  swept  onward,  as  the  social  swarms  persist  even  after  the 
death  of  members,  and  as  they  existed  before  such  members  were 
born.  It  is  the  aggregation  of  atoms  in  certain  ways  that  make 
the  molecule;  and  the  peculiar  combinations  of  molecules  in 
other  shapes  that  make  inorganic  substances.  All  that  exists,, 
living  or  inert,  depends  for  what  it  can  do  upon  what  it  is  made 
of,  and  how  it  is  put  together.  Function  is  not  possible  without 
structure ;  the  plough  cannot  do  the  work  of  the  locomotive,  even 
though  placed  upon  the  track.  Given  the  structure  and  the  envi- 
ronment, which  is  structure  again,  and  function  will  take  care  of 
itself. 

The  drops  that  form  the  cloud-banner,  as  well  as  other  meteor- 
ological appearances,  pass  on,  and  new  drops  come,  but  the  orig- 
inal form  is  there  so  long  as  the  environment,  the  influences,  are 
unchanged  that  called  the  form  into  being.  We  die,  but  our  places 
are  filled  by  others,  who  act  as  we  did,  think  as  we  did,  because 
they  resemble  us,  and  the  closer  the  resemblance  the  greater  is  the 
probability  of  identical  action.     Twins  often  think  alike,  act  the 

128 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  1 29 

same,  and  are  subject  to  the  same  ailments,  particularly  if  sub- 
jected to  the  same  conditions.  It  is  but  a  superficial  objection  that 
this  is  not  true  in  all  instances,  for  where  the  rule  apparently  fails 
it  is  because  there  are  unknown  failures  in  resemblance,  internal 
perhaps,  but  none  the  less  potent  in  causing  like  forms  to  have 
like  functions,  unlike  to  have  diverse  workings. 

The  mere  matter  of  descent  does  not  necessarily  involve  in- 
heritance of  feature  or  disposition  of  the  immediately  preceding 
generation ;  reversion  sometimes  takes  place  to  remote  and  un- 
known ancestry  likeness,  but  wherever  resemblance  extends  to 
minute  details  of  brain,  heart,  blood-vessel,  and  other  structure, 
the  two  who  are  thus  made  alike  will  act  alike,  and  that  they  do 
so  is  a  matter  of  common  knowledge. 

And  so  it  is  in  all  things  concrete  and  abstract :  ''Like  causes 
produce  like  effects." 

E.  C.  Hegeler,  of  La  Salle,  Illinois,  wrote  an  excellent  essay  on 
the  subject  of  form  constituting  individuality,  and  his  explana- 
tion deserves  a  far  wider  circulation  than  it  obtained  through  the 
"Open  Court"  publication. 

When  we  consider  the  billions  of  molecules  estimated  by 
Sorby,  of  the  Royal  Microscopic  Society,  in  a  single  drop  of  albu- 
men, and  the  later  estimation  of  between  5,000  and  6,000  atoms  in 
a  single  molecule  of  this  substance,  it  dbes  not  take  very  much 
imagination  to  see  how  the  foundation  of  any  sort  of  animal  shape 
up  to  man  himself  with  all  his  features,  emotions  and  intellect, 
may  not  only  be  transmitted  but  differ  in  species  and  varieties  by 
the  various  groupings  of  the  atoms  made  possible  through  the  im- 
mense number  in  a  single  molecule,  and  the  vast  number  of  such 
molecules  in  the  seed  or  germ  of  the  plant  or  animal,  regardless 
of  the  size  of  the  organism,  for  even  the  invisible  could  have  mil- 
lions of  molecules. 

Goethe^  says  in  a  little  poem  beginning  "Vom  Vater  hab'  ich 
die  Statur" : 

"Stature  from  father  and  the  mood, 
Stern  views  of  life  compelling; 
From  mother  I  take  the  joyous  heart 
And  the  love  of  story  telling. 

^  Bayard  Taylor's  Translation  Zahme  Zenien,  VI. 


130  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

"Great  grandsire's  passion  was  the  fair, 
What  if  I  still  reveal  it ; 
Great-grand-dam's  pomp  and  gold  and  show, 
And  in  my  bones  I  feel  it. 

"Of  all  the  various  elements 
That  make  up  this  complexity 
What  is  there  left  when  all  is  done 
To  call  originality  ?" 

Some  such  boast  may  be  heard  that  "I  can  trace  my  ancestry 
to  my  great-great-grandfather's  great-great-grandfather.  He 
was  a  cavalier  and  fought  under  Charles  I,"  and,  says  Duncan 
Rose,  "What  does  that  amount  to  ?  That  was  the  eighth  genera- 
tion before  you  and  in  that  generation  you  had  128  forefathers 
and  128  foremothers,  127  of  whom  you  do  not  know  and  some  of 
them  may  have  been  hung  for  murder  or  sheep  stealing." 
Princes,  dukes,  etc.,  came  from  commoners  and  their  grandchil- 
dren became  commoners.  William  of  Normandy  from  whom  so 
many  like  to  claim  descent,  was  a  bastard.  Cousins  of  the  fifth 
degree  alone  exceed  2,000.  Ancestry,  unless  kin  intermarry,  con- 
tain 2  parents,  4  grandparents,  16  foreparents  in  the  4th  genera- 
tion, and  so  on,  increasing  in  geometrical  progression  whose  ratio 
is  2.  The  number  of  progenitors  in  the  loth  generation  is  1,024 
traced  to  Elizabeth's  time,  and  in  the  20th  in  the  day  of  Edward  I 
1,048,576,  and  going  as  far  back  as  the  Norman  conquest  25  gen- 
erations ago  each  person  would  today  have  had  33,000,000  and 
over  of  ancestry,  so  there  must  have  been  intermarriages  to  have 
lessened  this  number.-  O.  W.  Holmes^  attacks  the  fallacy  of  the 
descent  in  general,  as  popularly  regarded,  and  the  claim  that  hun- 
dreds of  criminals  have  come  down  from  Margaret  Jukes,  when 
considering  the  people  among  whom  her  immediate  descendants 
associated,  were  of  her  kind,  it  merely  amounts  to  communities 
being  produced  similar  to  their  ancestors.  Nor  is  it  always  the 
case  that  offspring  resemble  their  parents,  for  they  may  revert  to 
their  remoter  forebears  in  person  or  disposition.  The  sons  of 
Charles  Martel  divided  his  kingdom,  but  one  resigned  to  become 

''Duncan  Rose,  Pride  of  Birdi. 
^  Elsie  Veirner. 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I3I 

a  monk  and  another  was  deposed  and  the  third  was  able  to  hold 
on  to  his  throne  only  through  the  pope's  friendship.  Charle- 
magne's successors  did  not  have  his  genius  or  energy.  Five  in 
seventy-five  years  bore  the  imperial  title  in  decaying  rule.  In 
Germany  the  family  became  extinct,  in  France  they  were  ousted 
by  the  Capets.  The  Western  Empire  decayed  and  fell  to  petty 
Italian  princes  through  grabbing  squabbles  of  small  politicians. 
Often  the  hero  leaves  progeny  who  inherit  none  of  his  traits. 
Oliver  Cromwell's  son  was  timid  and  gladly  escaped  the  cares  of 
government.  He  was.  the  very  reverse  of  his  father  in  disposi- 
tion. William  Franklin,  the  son  of  Benjamin,  was  an  obstinate 
royalist  governor  of  New  Jersey.  He  was  arrested  by  Congress, 
released  on  parole  and  sailed  to  England.  Oscar  of  Sweden  was 
broad,  democratic,  philanthropic  and  unselfish.  His  son  is  royal 
and  narrow-minded.  So  if  people  wish  to  be  well  ruled  they  had 
better  not  depend  on  good  kings  having  good  sons  to  govern 
them.  Many  an  immense  organization,  good  and  bad,  with  a 
person  of  striking  individuality  at  its  head,  has  gone  to  pieces 
when  it  fell  to  the  descendants  to- perpetuate  it. 

Racial  peculiarities  can  be  perpetuated  by  intermarriage  and 
clannishness.  Traits  possessed  in  common  by  relatives  become 
intensified  by  interbreeding  and  may  even  arise  to  national  dis- 
tinctiveness. The  more  a  single  purpose  is  developed  to  the  pre- 
judice of  other  functions  the  more  difficult  it  will  become  to  adjust 
to  new  purposes,  and  this  adaptability  in  certain  directions  and 
failure  to  adapt  to  other  directions  will  be  transmitted  if  the  in- 
fluences have  existed  through  many  generations.  Jews  are  poor 
farmers,  sailors  and  soldiers,  but  excellent  merchants,  and  to  this 
may  be  attributed  their  scattering  throughout  the  world  and  their 
abandoning  Palestine. 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation  that  Hebrews,  as  a  rule, 
are  more  than  ordinarily  devoted  to  their  families,  and  their  home 
life  is  beautiful  in  many  ways.  As  everything  has  a  cause,  the 
most  plausible  one  in  this  regard  appears  to  me  to  be  the  severe 
persecutions  to  which  that  race  has  been  subjected  for  centuries, 
compelling  clannishness  and  affording  them  their  greatest  happi- 
ness at  home.     Persistent  influences  acting  through  numberless 


132  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

generations  would  surely  institute  a  racial  peculiarity  such  as 
this. 

Darwin"^  ascribes  great  weight  to  the  inherited  effects  of  use 
and  disuse  for  both  body  and  mind  and  to  the  prolonged  action 
of  changed  conditions  of  life,  but  he  allows  for  occasional  rever- 
sions of  structure. 

The  correlations  of  growth  whereby  parts  of  the  body  will  vary 
in  sympathy  though  not  apparently  directly  connected  are  merely 
instances  of  association  of  organs  though  the  relations  may  not 
be  understood  at  the  time  when  noted. 

Haeckel's  law  of  heterochronism  in  an  organ  or  function  ap- 
pearing before  its  time,  out  of  the  order  of  its  inheritance,  is  il- 
lustrated in  little  girls  nursing  dolls  because  the  maternal  instinct 
appears  ahead  of  the  possibility  of  its  exercise.  But  imitation 
of  elders  has  greatly  to  do  with  this  play  at  caring  for  babies. 
The  vicissitudes  of  inheritance  may  be  illustrated  by  a  savage 
having  married  a  civilized  female,  through  which  union  there 
were  two  girls,  one  with  savage  and  the  other  with  a  milder  dis- 
position, but  on  developing  later  these  two  exchanged  resem- 
blances to  their  parents.  Another  generation  by  persistence  of 
civilized  influence  lost  much  of  the  savage,  but  there  would  be 
lapses  of  individual  descendants  occasionally  to  the  savage  fore- 
father resemblance.  Handwriting  may  be  inherited.  Tempo- 
rary impressions  of  the  parents,  such  as  mental  states,  occurring 
for  a  short  while,  could  have  very  little  weight  in  determining 
structure  as  opposed  to  the  influence  of  long  ages  of  ancestral 
structure  breeding.  So  character  is  often  the  result  of  many  cen- 
turies rather  than  of  accidental  paternal  influence,  so  far  as  the 
race  is  concerned,  especially.  The  occasional  feminine  antipathy 
to  cats  is  probably  inherited  from  arboreal  ancestors  who  had  to 
fight  wild  cats,  and  hatred  of  snakes  is  doubtless  inherited  though 
often  imparted. 

There  may  be  an  accumulation  of  anomalies  in  a  certain  def- 
inite direction  by  heredity,  so  that  a  typical  structure  may  become 
an  anomaly  and  an  anomaly  become  typical,  as  a  dialect  may  be- 
come a  language  and  a  language  drop  to  a  dialect.     Man  may 

*  Preface  Second  Edition  Descent  of  Man. 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I33 

Spread  from  tribes  to  races  and  the  latter  drop  to  tribes.  Osborn** 
"shows  the  relations  between  development,  balance  and  degenera- 
tion. The  thirteenth  rib  recurs  by  what  Gegenbaur^  calls  "neo- 
genetic  reversion,"  for  it  is  simply  the  anomalous  adult  develop- 
ment of  an  embryonic  rudiment..  Galton  says :  "Although  it  is 
pretty  well  ascertained  that  in  the  masses  of  population  the  brain 
ceases  to  grow  after  the  age  of  nineteen  or  even  earlier,  it  is  by 
no  means  the  case  with  university  students."  The  classification 
of  heredity,  especially  with  regard  to  insanity,  but  equally  applica- 
ble to  character  and  other  peculiarities,  includes  the  immediate, 
where  the  inheritance  is  from  the  parents ;  mediate,  when  from 
grandparents ;  simple  when  either  paternal  or  maternal,  the  lat- 
ter being  the  most  important  and  three  times  more  common ; 
-cumulative  when  from  several  generations ;  double  when  through 
both  parents ;  direct  when  in  the  line  of  descent ;  collateral  when 
in  a  side  family  branch ;  homochronous  when  peculiarities  are  at 
the  same  age  in  the  ancestor  and  descendant ;  anticipatory  if 
earlier  in  the  latter  person ;  similar  or  homologous  if  the  resem- 
blance is  close ;  dissimilar  or  transformed  if  unlike ;  progressive  in 
intensification  of  peculiarities  through  intermarriage;  regressive 
if  the  peculiarity  is  diluted ;  reversionary  if  further  back  than  a 
grandparent ;  latent  if  a  generation  or  more  is  skipped  by  a  pecu- 
liarity. We  inherit  from  our  sound  ancestry  as  well  as  from  the 
unsound;  were  this  otherwise  the  entire  race  would  be  unsound. 
Specialized  animals  have  a  more  commonly  generalized  an- 
cestor, suggesting  the  evolution  of  the  diverse  from  the  uniform, 
varieties  from  a  common  progenitor,  or,  as  Spencer  would  say, 
the  heterogeneous  from  the  homogeneous.  General  abilities,  gen- 
eralized emotions  and  intellect  may  be  inherited,  such  as  deter- 
mination, or  force  of  character,  sympathy,  musical  inclinations; 
but  the  particulars  are  not  inherited,  they  are  merely  more  readily 
developed  owing  to  the  predisposition  for  them.  So  capacity  is 
transmitted  but  the  education  is  not,  that  must  be  acquired,  but  the 
•capacity  peculiar  to  families  make  education  all  the  easier  for 
their  children.    Galton^  refers  to  Darwin's  mention  under  hered- 

■^  American  Naturalist,  June,  1892,  p.  455. 
f  Morph.  Jahrb.  Bd.  VI.,  p.  585. 
'Hereditary  Genius. 


J  34 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


ity,^  that  mental  qualities,  special  tastes,  habits,  general  intelli- 
gence, courage,  good  and  bad  temper,  are  certainly  transmitted,, 
and  genius  also.  Much  inconsistency  might  be  seen  by  a  super- 
ficial examination  of  such  claims  that  only  general  abilities  are 
handed  down,  and  yet  special  abilities  also  appear,  but  a  homely 
comparison  may  suffice  that  brain  and  brawn  may  make  a  good 
blacksmith,  and  his  offspring  will  be  adapted  to  blacksmithing 
very  likely ;  they  did  not  inherit  the  trade,  but  the  suitability  for 
the  trade.  If,  however,  with  but  little  interruption,  a  hundred- 
thousand  generations  of  blacksmiths  occurred  in  a  direct  family^ 
line  blacksmithing  would  develop  as  a  general  ability  instead  of  a: 

special. 

Early  marriages  were  frequent  in  Hungary  and  the  Magyars 
married  their  sisters,  so  the  stupidity  of  the  descendants  of  those 
who  did  so  is  readily  accounted  for  by  the  immature  stages  of 
fecundation  and  too  close  inbreeding.  It  is  conceivable  that  close 
inbreeding  would  affect  a  higher  organism,  such  as  higher  apes- 
and  man,  or  a  refined  breed  of  horses  or  dogs,  more  than  it  would 
animals  less  high  in  the  scale,  because  the  later  acquired  facul- 
ties, the  tenure  of  which  is  so  uncertain,  are  likely  to  be  obliterated, 
and  reversion  to  occur  to  the  ancestral  stock,  because  the  elements 
derivable  from  changes  of  stock,  within  certain  limits,  are  cut. 
off  by  inbreeding,  and  faults  are  intensified  as  well  as  common 
peculiarities.  Early  marriages  also  deprive  the  developing  em- 
bryo of  chemical  constituents,  such  as  molecular  possibilities  con- 
fined to  more  mature  periods.  Under  French  control  the  Egyp- 
tians were  not  prolific  because  the  same  old  natural  disadvantages 
continued,  but  when  the  British  regulated  the  Nile  flow  so  that 
great  regions  of  country  became  fertile,  the  fellaheen  sprang  up 
like  rank  weeds,  and  were  able  to  get  more  wives,  food  and  cigar- 
ettes, and  so  far  as  numbers  are  concerned  the  Egyptian  is  in- 
creasing, as  did  the  Hindoos  under  the  same  government. 

If  half  the  race  is  degraded  the  entire  race  will  suffer.  If 
women  are  repressed,  as  heretofore,  and  as  low  oriental  conditions 
allow,  and  kept  uneducated  and  from  opportunities  to  advance, 
then  the  children  of  both  sexes  will  suffer  from  inheritance  and 
faulty  training  of  the  mothers  whose  care  is  the  most  important 

*  Plants  and  Animals  Under  Domestication. 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  135 

for  the  young.  The  color  of  hair,  eyes  and  complexion  in  the 
order  named  can  indicate  race  origin  better  than  other  things. 
Language  is  of  the  least  importance.  To  tabulate  ancestral  in- 
heritance it  would  be  well  to  record  in  children  when  the  hair 
and  eyes  changed  color,  and  the  weight  of  heredity,  not  the  se- 
quence always,  might  then  be  found,  but  it  would  seem  justified 
to  infer  that  children  with  yellow  hair,  blue  eyes  and  fair  com- 
plexion show  Aryan  as  their  first  or  remotest  peculiarities. 
Darker  hair  and  eyes  and  other  colors  and  the  darker  complex- 
ions, it  is  likely,  came  from  other  races  than  the  Aryan.  The 
significance  of  so  many  children  of  Germanic  and  Celtic  races 
being  blue  eyed  and  yellow  haired  could  be  that  the  Aryans  were 
their  far  off  ancestry.  Subsequent  complexions  point  to  crossings- 
with  other  races.  Intense  blondism  may  savor  of  yellow  dog  re- 
version to  the  jackal  in  a  few  cases.  Not  much  attention  has  been 
paid  to  progenitors  and  descent,  but  with  modern  ninety-nine  year 
leases  increasing  there  will  be  inducements  for  descent  to  be  more 
carefully  recorded,  and  interest  will  change  the  former  careless- 
ness of  preserving  family  trees. 

Darwin^  records  that  the  plumage  of  the  young  is  not  as  a 
rule  so  conspicuous  as  that  of  the  parents.  Variations  arising 
later  in  life  are  commonly  transmitted  to  the  same  sex.  Mental 
inheritance  is  often  associated  with  the  appearance,  for  a  child 
may  inherit  features  from  a  parent  and  also  resemble  that  parent 
in  disposition.  We  do  what  our  anatomical  make-up  compels  us 
to  do,  a  certain  brain  shape  entails  a  certain  character.  It  is  con- 
ceivable that  if  the  tissues  of  either  parent  were  adjusted  to  alco- 
hol that  the  germ  and  sperm  cells  would  be  so  modified  that  at 
the  time  of  the  first  drink  the  adjustment  would  be  found  to  have 
been  made  in  the  offspring,  and  the  taste  was  thus  arranged  for 
ante-natally.  This  defect  or  want  with  a  physical  molecular  basis 
may  be  carried  to  the  extreme  of  producing  idiocy  or  feeble  mind- 
edness.  Two  totally  distinct  families  of  frogs  took  to  an  arboreal 
life  and  became  so  like  one  another  that  we  have  to  depend  on 
anatomical  differences  to  tell  them  apart.  This  shows  how  like 
environment  may  produce  like  effects  and  modify  differing  spe- 
cies.   Goethe  indicated  the  existence  of  an  underlying  law  or  plan 

"Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  II.,  p.  179. 


136  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

in  pointing  out  that  all  forms  are  similar  though  they  differ  one 
from  the  other. 

Democritus  expressed  the  idea  of  pan-genesis  in  suggesting 
that  the  seed  of  animals  was  derived  from  all  parts  of  the  bodies 
of  both  sexes  and  that  like  parts  produced  like,  and  Buffon  re- 
vived this  idea  of  heredity  two  thousand  years  later.  Spencer 
suggested  ^'physiological  units"  from  the  body-cells  of  the  parent 
forming  the  germ  cells  and  then  developing  into  the  body  cells 
of  the  offspring.  Darwin  postulated  a  circulation  of  minute  buds 
from  each  cell,  each  body-cell  throwing  off  a  gemmule  containing 
its  characteristics,  which  concentrate  in  the  germ  cell.  Galton 
contributed  experimental  disproof  of  the  blood  circulating  gem- 
mules,  and  Prof.  Brooks^^  regarded  the  ovum  as  a  cell  designed 
to  be  a  storehouse  of  hereditary  characteristics,  each  characteristic 
being  represented  by  material  particles  of  some  kind ;  thus  hered- 
itary characteristics  were  handed  down  by  simple  cell  division, 
each  fertilized  ovum  giving  rise  to  the  body  cells  in  which  its 
hereditary  characters  were  manifested  and  to  new  ova  in  which 
these  characters  were  conserved  for  the  next  generation.  Weis- 
mann  disregards  many  facts  to  confuse  himself  and  others  with 
words  and  refines  and  elaborates  the  continuity  of  germ  cells,  a 
, notion  which  is  "as  old  as  the  hills."  As  the  successor  of  meta- 
physical ways  of  thinking  the  biok  gical  can  only  supplant  it  by  a 
thorough  chemical  knowledge  which  biologists  in  general  appear 
to  prefer  to  get  along  without,  A  proper  regard  for  such  very 
actual  entities  as  atomic  and  molecular  combinations  in  the  build- 
ing up  of  both  the  germ  and  sperm  cells,  will  make  clear  many 
otherwise  mysterious  phenomena. 

The  lowest  organism  contains  in  its  combined  germ  and 
sperm  cell  given  off  by  fission,  a  mere  continuation  of  its  own 
substance,  so  that  the  continuation  theory  is  true  for  these  prim- 
itive forms.  In  the  evolutionary  scale  the  higher  animal  is  a 
more  complex  organism,  made  up  of  molecular  combinations 
grouped  together  in  mechanical  and  chemical  complexities,  in  an 
orderly,  evolved  manner,  step  by  step.  When  one  step  in  mole- 
cular growth  and  union  of  molecules  had  been  taken,  another 
step  was  possible,  and  it  is  this  sort  of  potential,  this  latent  pos- 
'"  Law  of  Heredity,  1883. 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I37 

sibility,  that  is  transmitted  with  the  ovum  given  off,  that  con- 
stitutes all  there  is  in  heredity. 

For  instance,  the  simplest  descent  is  by  the  parent  parting  with 
a  piece  of  itself.  The  next  step  is  when  cells  take  upon  themselves 
the  function  of  elaborating  the  molecules  of  the  parent  that  are 
to  produce  the  offspring,  and  next  differentiation  of  the  germ  and 
sperm  cells  occur,  the  germ  cell  to  afford  the  main  mass  of  pa- 
rental pabulum,  or  basic  molecules,  and  the  sperm  cell  is  left  more 
free  to  elaborate  the  higher  grouping  of  atoms  and  molecules  and 
their  tensions  or  tendency  to  attract  further  atoms  in  regular  se- 
quence, so  that  when  the  sperm  and  the  germ  cells  are  united  the 
fecundated  ovum  is  started  on  a  career  of  molecular  tensions  and 
attractions,  or  affinities  for  substances  to  be  picked  out  of  its  en- 
vironment, the  maternal  tissues  of  all  kinds,  not  blood  alone,  in 
the  order  of  possibility  of  building  up,  imparted  and  copied  from 
the  history  of  the  race,  the  tribe,  the  family,  the  species. 

If  the  atoms  a,  b,  c,  d,  e,  f  constitute  the  highest  form  of  mo- 
lecular construction  of  potential  protoplasm  and  a  and  b  the  low- 
est, then  c,  d,  e,  f  are  acquired  evolutionarily.  If  the  atoms  are 
not  in  the  environment  and  not  found  in  the  order  acquired ;  if 
one,  say  d,  is  absent,  then  a  break  occurs  even  though  others  are 
present.     If  all  are  present  then  all  may  be  taken  up  in  sequence. 

So,  if,  to  simplify  matters,  salt  is  a  necessity  to  the  evolving 
tissues  and  organisms,  both  the  ancestral  form  and  embryo  will 
have  affinities  for  salt  that  will  ensure  its  presence  in  nutritive 
fluids  such  as  blood,  lymph  and  amniotic  fluid,  so  the  organism 
may  be  said  to  carry  its  environment,  in  this  case  a  salty  fluid, 
with  it  in  gestation ;  and  so  if  the  chemical  constituents  which  are 
main  factors  in  the  evolution  of  the  organism  are  present  also 
with  the  embryo,  then  ontogenesis  is  chemically  identical  with 
phylogenesis,  individual  with  race  history. 

Cope's  law  of  acceleration  lops  off  or  abbreviates  stages.  So 
salmon  seek  fresh  water  and  eels  salt  water  to  spawn,  caused 
probably  by  the  salmon's  ancestry  being,  for  an  important  period, 
fresh  water  fish  and  eels  originally  having  come  from  the  sea. 

The  heat  needed  to  build  the  tgg  into  a  chick  apparently 
moves  the  molecules  about  and  enables  chemical  interchange. 
Plant  evolution  and  development  from  seed  similarly  consists  in  an 


138  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

aggregation  of  atoms  set  in  motion  by  heat  and  moisture  to  afford 
the  necessary  rotation  and  combination. 

How  diseases  are  inherited  was  discussed  in  Science  Progress, 
August,  1896,  and  reference  was  made  to  Pasteur's  pebrine  dis- 
ease of  silkworms  in  which  definite  sporocysts  were  transmitted 
from  the  imago,  or  perfect  insect,  by  way  of  the  tgg  cell  and  that 
the  larva  was  directly  infected  in  this  manner.  It  has  often 
seemed  to  me  that  indirect  transmission  is  more  common  through 
the  inheritance  of  a  predisposition,  which  simply  means  that  the 
soil  is  the  same  in  the  ancestor  and  the  offspring,  upon  which  the 
same  kind  of  germs  find  lodgment  and  are  thus  enabled  to  thrive. 

The  reasons  for  reversions  through  crossing,  such  as  the 
wilder  offspring  of  a  negro  and  Indian  mixture,  appears  to  me 
to  be  through  acquired  traits  when  recent  and  weak  depending 
upon  freshly  created  microscopic  brain  and  nerve  development 
which  being  alike  in  the  sexes  of  the  European  are  transmitted  to 
the  children,  but  being  unlike  or  missing  in  other  races,  such  in- 
side features  are  not  handed  down  by  inheritance. 

When  two  races  who  are  both  low  in  the  scale  cross  the  result 
is  eminently  bad.  Half  castes  are  said  to  be  "made  by  the  devil." 
When  mules  are  wild  they  have  striped  legs  like  their  ancestry. 

As  the  right  of  private  vengeance  is  a  recognized  one  among 
Asiatic  tribes  and  similarly  crude  customs  render  such  people  in- 
compatible with  civilized  society,  whenever  one  of  the  civilized 
marries  into  such  an  ancient  community  his  offspring  is  liable 
to  revert  to  the  lower  stock  because  it  was  common  to  all  our 
races,  as  mongrel  dogs  go  back  to  the  yellow  jackal. 

The  students  of  the  Latin  Quarter  annually  celebrate  their 
mid-lent  carnival,  and  elect  a  queen  from  the  Parisian  washer- 
women. The  students'  motto  is  *'Folie  et  Charite."  A  collection 
of  the  photographs  of  these  queens,  each  is  called  ''Reine  des 
Reines,"  compares  favorably  with  portraits  of  veritable  queens. 
Owing  to  the  selection  of  the  better  looking  these  washerwomen 
look  better  in  their  regal  clothing  than  an  equal  number  of  female 
members  of  reigning  families. 

Megalomania,  or  big  head,  could  naturally  be  the  form  of  in- 
sanity of  unbridled  sovereigns  even  to  the  subversion  of  regard 
for  parents,  as  little  Wilhelmina  of  Holland  exhibited  when  she 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I39 

compelled  her  mother  to  pick  up  her  dropped  boquet  and  Wilhelm 
of  Germany  parades  in  his  dislike  for  his  mother.  Wilhelm  has 
made  public  claims  to  divine  inspiration  and  asserts  he  has  mas- 
tered all  the  arts  and  resents  criticism  of  his  productions.  In  the 
Baltic  he  sermonized  on  his  yacht  in  churchly  robes  and  likes 
stage  effects  as  Nero  did  with  similar  claims  to  omniscience.  An 
Arab  swindled  him  by  selling  him  some  costly  "Moorish  steeds" 
that  turned  out  to  be  common  horses,  and  he  went  into  a  maniacal 
fury  that  came  near  ending  in  the  stable  men  tying  him  up  with 
vulgar  stable  ropes.  His  delusions  of  persecution  after  being 
struck  by  a  lunatic  were  quite^well  known.  He  prepared  his  army 
to  kill  off  all  in  Berlin  if  necessary  to  protect  him.  Nicholas  of 
Russia  is  a  mystic  and  tends  to  melancholy  brooding,  at  one  time 
falling  into  the  clutches  of  a  French  humbug  clairvoyant.  He  is 
surprisingly  superstitious  in  spite  of  his  wide  reading  and  oppor- 
tunities for  information,  certainly  a  reversionary  trait  to  worse 
times.  Alfonso  of  Spain  also  treated  his  mother  shabbily  and 
gave  his  ministers  and  bishops  trouble  by  his  loftiness  and  sneer^ 
at  "holy"  matters  such  as  relics.  A  wiser  king,  from  policy, 
would  not  have  publicly  scoffed  even  though  he  did  not  assent  to 
priestly  tricks,  though  more  can  be  dared  than  formerly,  for  in- 
telligence is  beginning  to  spread  even  in  Spain. 

The  madness  of  Otto  of  Bavaria  ended  in  his  killing  the  cele- 
brated Dr.  Gudden,  a  more  useful  man  than  Otto  could  ever  have 
become,  and  committing  suicide  at  the  same  time.  He  came  from 
insane  stock.  The  Hapsburgs  and  Bourbons  have  face  and  other 
peculiarities  due  to  heredity  and  the  Jews  are  thus  similar  through 
intermarriage.^^  Joanna  of  Aragon  was  weak-minded,  jealous, 
and  before  becoming  ungovernably  mad  in  1496,  married  Philip 
whom  she  poisoned.  Her  sister  Catherine  was  the  mother  of 
Bloody  Mary  of  England  who  showed  the  moral  insanity  and 
ferocious  bigotry  of  the  other  Spanish  Hapsburgs.  A  grand- 
daughter of  Joanna's  went  mad  and  her  son  was  demented.  A 
Portuguese  queen  descendent  of  a  sister  of  Joanna  went  raving 
mad.  Numerous  children  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella  were  sickly 
and  died  young.  Joanna's  son,  Emperor  Charles  V  of  Germany 
was  sound  mentally  till  later  in  life  when  he  became  melancholic. 

"  Races  of  Man,  1876,  Oscar  Pascal. 


140  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Philip  II,  his  successor,  was  one  of  the  most  gloomy  and  ferocious 
bigots  the  world  ever  saw.  He  was  content  with  nothing  but 
wholesale  murder  and  extermination,  Don  Carlos,  his  eldest  son, 
was  furious  and  ungovernably  vicious  and  finally  died  insane. 
Rudolf  II,  of  1576  to  1612,  son  of  Maximilian  II,  had  uncontrol- 
lable passion  followed  by  abject  submission  to  his  advisors,  the 
Jesuits.  Rudolf  II,  Don  Carlos  and  Ferdinand  II  had  equally 
odious  characters  with  Philip  11.  To  the  ferocious  bigotry  of 
Ferdinand  II  may  be  ascribed  the  thirty  years'  war,  one  of  the 
most  hideous  wars  of  history.  More  than  twelve  million  people 
perished  in  strife,  wolves  tore  through  the  burnt  and  deserted  vil- 
lages ;  men  killed  their  children  and  dug  up  dead  bodies  for  food, 
and  before  its  close  Germany  was  exhausted.  Ferdinand  was 
treacherous,  cold-blooded  and  diabolical,  and  a  tool  of  the  Jesuits. 
Peter  the  Great  was  furious,  cruel  and  savage,  sometimes  spend- 
ing an  entire  day  as, executioner,  cutting  off  his  subjects'  heads. 
He  was  epileptic  like  Mohammed,  Napoleon  and  Swedenbourg, 
and  flogged  his  own  son  Alexis  to  death.  Peter  II,  the  grandson 
of  Peter  the  Great,  repeated  every  vice  of  his  grandsire  and  was 
assassinated  by  order  of  his  wife,  Catherine  II.  Paul  I  was  also 
done  away  with  for  being  as  bad  as  Peter.  Alexander  I  escaped 
the  insanity  but  the  ignorant  frustrated  his  plans  to  do  good. 

George  III  is  said  to  have  had  the  same  form  of  insanity  as 
his  ancestor,  the  Duke  of  Cella,  in  the  sixteenth  century,  200 
years  later. 

Th.  Ribot^^  remarks  that  talent,  power,  wealth  are  ephemeral, 
for  degeneracy,  which  is  always  fatally  inherent  in  that  which 
rises,  will  again  lower  them  or  their  race,  while  the  silent  work  of 
the  millions  will  continue  to  produce  others  and  to  impress  upon 
them  a  distinctive  character. 

W.  W.  Ireland,^^  in  his  admirable  writings,  reviews  the  matter 
of  the  insanity  of  the  Claudian-Julian  family,  Augustus,  Julia, 
Tiberius,  Caligula,  Claudius,  Messalina,  Agrippina,  Nero,  Dom- 
itian.  The  Empress  Charlotte  of  the  French-Austrian  attempt  to 
grab  Mexico,  sister  of  the  Belgian  King  Leopold  II  lost  her  rea- 
son in  1867  upon  the  death  of  her  husband  Maximilian  who  was 

"Diseases  of  Personality. 
"  The  Blot  Upon  the  Brain. 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I4I 

captured  and  shot  by  the  Mexicans.  The  Hst  of  crazy  royalty 
could  be  indefinitely  extended.  Ireland  speaks  of  the  insanity  of 
power.  Certainly  where  mankind  has  become  better  suited  to 
be  governed  than  to  have  unlimited  power  an  unstable  brain  could 
readily  break  down  when  all  checks  upon  folly,  cruelty  or  ex- 
travagance were  removed.  But  when  bad  heredity  is  intensified 
by  intermarriages  despotism  and  degeneracy  are  at  their  worst, 
and  what  can  be  said  of  people  who  allow  such  monsters  to  rule 
them? 

Wallace  notes^*  that  health,  strength  and  long  life  are  the  re- 
sults of  a  harmony  between  the  individual  and  the  universe. 

The  correlation  of  growth  causes  hairless  dogs  to  have  im- 
perfect health,  while  cats  when  blue-eyed  are  deaf.  Small  feet 
accompany  short  beaks  in  pigeons.  The  most  basic  instincts  are 
capable  of  inhibition  through  training,  as  in  the  case  of  a  man 
dropping  dead  from  starvation  through  unwillingness  to  accept 
charity.  Of  course  insanity  accounts  for  numberless  perversions 
of  that  and  other  kinds.  It  is  degeneracy  indeed  when  the  mater- 
nal instinct  fails  as  when  the  yak  in  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago,  kicked 
its  infant  away  and  it  became  necessary  to  feed  it  on  cow's  milk. 

Poor  William  Cowper  the  poet,  Mary  Lamb  and  her  brother 
Charles  Lamb,  belonged  to  the  host  of  imperfect  human  beings 
classified  as  degenerates.  Byron  was  both  mentally  and  physi- 
cally defective,  but  it  need  not  be  inferred  that  all  who  achieve 
anything  in  this  world  are  degenerates,  nor  that  mediocrity  is 
proof  against  mental  disorder.  As  to  degeneracy  of  institutions 
many  that  were  started  to  benefit  mankind  have  attracted  the 
sneaks  who  perverted  the  funds  to  their  own  private  use  or  sub- 
stituted a  completely  different,  often  antagonistic,  end  for  the 
original  intent  of  the  organization. 

The  sea  squirts  were  free  swimmers  when  young  but  became 
attached  as  adults.  Oysters  are  degenerate  molluscs  whose  an- 
cestors were  free  swimmers.  The  flat  fish  with  migratory  eyes 
that  transfer  from  opposite  sides  to  the  upper  part  of  the  fish,  are 
degenerate,  as  are  the  blind  cave  fish  who  show  evidences  of  their 
ancestral  optic  apparatus.     Any  new  set  of  conditions  occurring 

"  Natural  Selection. 


142  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  an  animal  which  renders  its  food  and  safety  very  easily  attained 
leads  as  a  rule  to  degeneration,  just  as  an  active,  healthy  man 
sometimes  degenerates  when  he  becomes  possessed  of  a  fortune, 
or  as  Rome  did  when  possessed  of  the  riches  of  the  ancient  world. 

Let  the  parasitic  life  be  once  secured  and  away  go  legs,  iciws, 
eyes  and  ears,  the  active,  highly  gifted  crab,  insect  or  annelid 
may  become  a  mere  sac,  absorbing  nourishment  and  laying  eggs. 

Languages  degenerate,  high  civilization  has  decayed.  By 
studying  the  conditions  likely  to  set  up  degeneration  we  may 
avoid  that  fate  for  our  race. 

Seton  Thompson  says  that  the  mongrel  yellow  dog  is  an  at- 
tempt of  nature  to  restore  the  ancestral  jackal,  the  parent  stock  of 
all  dogs.  The  scientific  name  of  the  jackal  is  Canis  aureus,  which 
means  yellow  dog,  and  not  a  few  of  that  animal's  characteristics 
are  seen  in  his  domesticated  representative,  for  the  plebeian  cur 
is  shrewd,  active  and  hardy  and  far  better  equipped  for  the  real 
struggle  of  life  than  are  any  of  his  thoroughbred  kinsmen.  The 
reversion  sometimes  is  more  complete  and  the  yellow  dog  appears 
with  pricked  and  pointed  ears  and  is  liable  to  develop  the  dead- 
liest treachery.  Seton  Thompson  tells  of  a  mongrel  collie^''  raised 
as  a  sheep  dog  who,  faithful  at  first,  afterwards  became  a  savage, 
treacherous  sheep  killer.  Another  yellow  dog  led  a  double  life  as 
a  faithful  sheep  dog  by  day  but  was  a  bloodthirsty  devourer  of 
far-off  neighbors'  flocks  by  night,  too  smart  to  attack  his  own 
master's  sheep.  Such  instances  are  more  common  than  are  sup- 
posed. Seton  Thompson  secured  accounts  of  six  collies  of  this 
kind,  one  of  whom  added  to  his  nightly  amusement  the  crowning 
barbarity  of  murdering  the  smaller  dogs  of  the  vicinity.  He  had 
killed  twenty  and  hidden  them  in  the  sand  pit. 

Where  the  outside  of  the  heels  of  shoes  are  worn,  due  to  weak 
ankles  or  where  there  are  bow  legs,  there  is  a  resemblance  in  the 
gait  to  the  waddle  of  the  climbing  apes,  and  as  they  preceded 
man  and  his  present  method  of  walking  the  waddle  and  bow  legs 
are  reversions  to  our  tree-climbing  forefathers,  except  where 
rickets  is  the  cause,  then  the  degeneracy  is  even  worse.  The 
ability  to  grasp  with  the  foot  and  toes  is  monkey-like  and  atavistic 
or  reversionary.     There  are  instances  of  arrested  development, 

"  Wild  Animals  I  Have  Known. 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I43 

post-natal  as  well  as  pre-natal  rather  loosely  included  as  degene- 
rates. 

Reversionary  sense  of  smell  in  some  defectives  suggests  the 
query,  Are  savages  better  developed  in  olfaction  ?  A  reversionary 
in  St.  Louis  told  his  friends  by  their  personal  odor,  and  some  im- 
perfectly developed  children  have  this  peculiar  ability  which 
should  be  discouraged  whenever  found.  There  are  racial  tenden- 
cies to  retrogression.  History  is  full  of  examples  of  nations  after 
gaining  certain  degrees  of  civilization,  losing  it  more  rapidly  than 
it  had  been  acquired.  Arts  and  laws  were  forgotten  and  their 
descendants  in  Asia,  Egypt  and  Central  America  wander  through 
the  ruined  halls  of  their  ancestral  palaces  without  a  glimmer  of 
tradition  of  their  past  greatness.  Many  Spanish  and  Portuguese 
in  America  sink  to  the  lowest  levels. 

Hysteria  is  a  form  of  degeneracy.  No  matter  what  necessity 
others  may  be  under  to  get  a  living  or  to  hasten  to  work  the  hys- 
terical demands  services  as  imperiously  as  though  her  selfish 
Avhims  were  the  most  important  things  in  the  world  and  every  one 
else  had  business  of  no  consequence.  It  is  dissolution  or  rever- 
sion or  arrest  to  childishness  so  far  as  disposition  goes.  The  men- 
tal reversion  to  ape-like  inanity,  and  imitation,  or  to  harmless 
uselessness  is  observable  in  many  young  club  members.  ''Sissies," 
as  they  are  called,  who  spend  their  time  at  trivial  games  and  sip- 
ping drinks  at  club  bars  and  addressing  each  other  as  "Deah  bov," 
repeating  idiotically  certain  phrases,  never  reading,  and  com- 
plaining that  thinking  gives  them  headaches.  The  cigarette  is 
operating  somewhat  to  kill  off  this  degeneracy.  Senility  exhibits 
various  phases  of  mental  dissolution ;  an  old  lady  of  good  literary 
attainments  became  lachrymose,  fearful  of  death  with  no  philo- 
sophical resignation  and  yet  not  religious.  If  in  pleasant  com- 
pany she  could  appear  like  her  former  self.  A  literary  training 
does  not  impart  the  resignation  that  science  is  so  apt  to  afford  to 
declining  years. 

Dissolution  is  a  sort  of  analysis,  enabling  traits  to  stand  alone, 
or  in  new  relations,  uncombined  with  others  that  may  have  con- 
cealed them. 

In  de  Croisset's  play  "J^  "^  sais  quoi"  is  shown  the  evolution 
or  involution  of  an  honest,  loud,  raw  American  girl,  with  bad 


144  '^"^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

French  accent,   into  a   dishonest   Parisian   woman   with  a  pure 
accent. 

Dissokition  uncovers  bases  and  fundamentals  unsuspected  be- 
fore. For  instance,  in  mental  disintegration  the  faculties  that 
are  capable  of  distinction,  singly  or  involving  certain  other  facul- 
ties, become  apparent.  Basic  emotions  are  shown  by  the  insane, 
such  as  exaltation  and  depression,  delusions  of  wealth,  power, 
persecution,  poisoning,  etc.  When  a  rich  man  becomes  poor  he 
is  astovmded  at  the  falling  away  of  friends  and  at  what  he  had 
previously  considered  fixed.  He  has  merely  seen  the  superstruc- 
ture removed.  When  famine  reaches  a  land,  during  shipwreck, 
when  war  comes,  things  appeaf  in  new  guises,  and  you  realize 
that  you  did  not  really  know  your  friends  before.  In  captivity, 
in  prison,  and  in  other  afflictions  the  brute  in  man  stands  nakedly 
forth,  and  startling  developments  of  some  beautiful  traits  are 
sometimes  disclosed  that  were  all  unsuspected  previously. 

,  During  the  World's  Fair  was  the  thief's  opportunity  for  ex- 
tortion, robbery,  etc.  During  a  crowded  conclave  once  in  Chi- 
cago water  was  sold  to  sun-stricken  visitors  by  bartenders  at  fifty 
cents  a  glass.  Nations  during  dissolution  assume  primitive  char- 
acteristics. Opportunity  discloses  realities  not  imagined  to  exist 
previously. 

Large  universities,  seminaries,  etc.,  may  in  their  early  poverty- 
stricken  days  send  forth  their  best  results  in  graduates.  Later 
when  wealthy,  fashionable  boarding  schools  cultivating  emotions 
instead  of  reason,  athletics  forsaking  regard  for  mental  training, 
may  sap  the  intelligence  of  the  pupils  largely.  The  early  Chris- 
tians were  sincere  but  rogues  corrupted  the  church  as  it  waxed 
rich.  Tolstoy  wrote  feelingly  on  this  subject.  Secret  societies 
often  degenerate  and  have  become  nests  of  criminals,  in  extreme 
instances  inducing  governments  to  destroy  the  society  and  its 
members. 

Degeneracy  is  observable  in  some  business  corporations  where 
petty  swindling,  coupled  with  great  extortion  succeeds  to  the 
bribery  of  officials,  with  too  great  profits,  such  as  a  vast  telephone 
company  secures;  the  next  step  is  a  lowered  tone  of  employes, 
their  neglect  of  business  and  finally  matters  become  so  putrid  that 
a  receivership  or  competition  follows,  unless  the  patient  public 


HEREDITY    AND    DEGENERACY.  I45 

continues  to  support  the  monstrosity.    Coal  conspiracies  between 
railroads  and  dealers  have  threatened  industrial  degeneracy. 


CHAPTER  VII. 
SUPERSTITION. 

Definitions  of  superstition  are  always  unsatisfactory,  says 
Professor  Joseph  Jastrow.  It  masquerades  in  strange,  some- 
times pleasing  garb,  and  it  is  not  always  easy  to  recognize  it  in 
its  disguises.  He  refers  to  the  historian  Lecky  having  written  a 
notable  account  of  the  struggle  between  superstition  and  reason/ 
and  to  the  fact  that  streaks  of  superstition  enter  into  the  composi- 
tion of  each  one  of  us,  a  most  important  thing  to  understand  is 
that  superstition  is  a  natural  inborn  human  trait.  We  deceive 
ourselves  often  into  imagining  that  we  have  reasons  for  believing 
matters  when  they  may  be  founded  upon  delusions,  pure  and 
simple.  We  welcome  arguments  that  support  a  belief  to  which 
we  are  already,  perhaps  unreasonably,  disposed.  Lowell  says : 
"The  marvelous  is  so  fascinating  that  nine  out  of  ten,  if  once 
persuaded  that  a  thing  is  possible,  are  eager  to  believe  it  prob- 
able, and  at  last  cunning  in  convincing  themselves  that  it  is 
proven." 

Current  appeals  to  our  fears  instruct  us  not  to  spill  salt,  not 
to  be  one  of  thirteen  at  table,  not  to  begin  anything  on  Friday,  not 
to  look  at  the  new  moon  over  your  left  shoulder;  that  bad  luck 
follows  from  meeting  a  yellow  dog  or  black  cat,  passing  under  a 
ladder,  opening  an  umbrella  in  the  house,  breaking  a  mirror; 
while  good  luck  is  secured  by  planting  at  certain  phases  of  the 
moon,  finding  a  horseshoe  or  gathering  the  froth  on  your  coffee, 
as  it  represents  money.  Children  solemnly  tell  each  other  that 
lessons  will  be  missed  if  cracks  in  the  pavement  are  stepped  on, 
a  sign  made  over  the  left  shoulder  enables  a  lie  to  be  told  without 
the  usual  consequences,  tingling  of  your  left  ear  means  that  some 
one  is  talking  against  you ;  and  Jastrow,  who  has  made  a  study  of 
such  matters,  concludes  that : 

^  History  of  the  Rise  and  Influence  of  the  Spirit  of  Rationalism  in  Europe. 

M6 


SUPERSTITION.  I47 

"Possibly  the  surest  index  of  the  aliveness  of  these  beliefs  is 
that  the  attitude  of  childhood  is  sufficiently  sympathetic  with  them 
to  make  children  invent  superstitions,  and  local  variations  of  these 
or  inventions  of  signs  and  interpretations  of  omens  may  be  found 
wherever  the  spirit  of  childhood  blossoms  unrepressed.  The 
lives  of  the  less  progressive  portions  of  the  community  are  like- 
wise favorable  to  the  persistence  of  unreasoning  beliefs,  and 
sailors,  nurses  and  rustics  will  add  a  rich  addition  to  the  hand- 
ful of  irrational  notions  above  cited.  All  this  means  that,  where 
the  rationalistic  spirit  is  absent  or  undeveloped,  the  superstitious 
bent  has  a  freer  field,  and  as  a  rule  improves  his  opportunities. 
Where  these  beliefs  survive  most  vigorously  there  is  least  exami- 
nation of  their  truth  or  plausibility,  and  there  is  a  most  ready 
acceptance  of  them  by  their  natural  appeal  to  a  sympathetic  tem- 
perament. These  beliefs  are  cherished  mainly — and  yet  not  ex- 
clusively— because  the  persons  who  are  attracted  to  them  feel 
like  believing  them.  They  fit  in  with  the  general  thought  habits 
of  the  individual,  and  he  believes  in  response  to  a  temperamental 
impulse,  and  very,  very  little  by  virtue  of  any  proof  or  experience 
that  to  him  seems  to  justify  the  belief." 

Fear  and  love  are  the  emotions  concerned  in  what  has  inter- 
changeably been  called  by  either  name  of  superstition  or  religion 
according  to  bias  or  training,  and  the  reasons  why  such  fierce 
contentions  have  filled  the  world  over  creeds  is  that  these  same 
emotions  are  all  powerful  in  their  control  of  human  activities, 
next  to  hunger,  which  is  the  dominant  desire,  and  which  fre- 
quently, in  some  of  its  derived  forms  of  greed,  love  of  admiration, 
love  of  power,  etc.,  takes  advantage  of  the  superstition  or  relig- 
ion it  finds  that  it  can  impose  upon  and  turn  to  its  own  selfish  use. 

Brinton  holds  that  "the  principle  at  the  base  of  all  religions 
and  all  superstitions  is  the  same,  and  the  grossest  rites  of  bar- 
barism deserve  the  name  of  religion  just  as  much  as  the  refined 
ceremonies  of  modern  churches.  The  aims  of  the  worshipper 
may  be  selfish  and  sensuous,  there  may  be  entire  absence  of  ethical 
intention,  his  rites  may  be  empty  formalities  and  his  creed  im- 
moral, but  this  will  be  his  religion  all  the  same,  and  we  should  not 
apply  to  it  any  other  name."^ 

'Brinton,  Religion  of  Primitive  Peoples,  p.  28. 


148  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

The  dog  superstitiously  howls  at  the  moon  or  its  shadows,. 
with  ruffled  fur  and  trembHng,  and  horses  shy  away  from  wheel- 
barrows from  what  causes  some  men  to  shy  into  church :  fear  of 
the  unknown.  And  dogs  take  advantage  of  the  awe  in  which 
others  may  stand  by  impressing  their  importance  upon  them,  and 
many  sermons,  speeches  and  threats  of  humanity  are  to  the  same 
end  as  the  bark  of  the  dog. 

Heroditus  tells  of  the  noise  of  the  donkeys  of  the  army  of 
Darius  stampeding  the  Scythian  cavalry  horses,  as  they  had  never 
heard  the  like,  this  and  the  terror  of  horses  for  steam  road-rollers 
and  other  unfamiliar  things  is  in  the  nature  of  superstition. 
Shrinking  from  danger,  whether  done  consciously  or  not  is  a 
reflex  associated  with  fear,  and  some  exhibitions  of  superstition 
are  due  to  this  instinct.  The  sensitive  plant  folds  its  leaf  when 
touched,*  the  wild  cactus  spreads  its  stamens,  and  the  polyp  con- 
tracts its  tentacles.  So-  a  reaction  like  this  may  be  the  nearest  to 
what  would  correspond  to  dread  in  the  lowest  forms  of  life. 

Max  Miiller^  refers  approvingly  to  Rudolph  von  Jhering's 
book*  wherein,  the  first  Aryan  home  is  located  on  the  northern 
slopes  of  the  Hindukush,  where  others  had  placed  it  before. 
Agriculture  on  a  large  scale  there  was  not  practicable  and  the 
mode  of  life  was  that  of  shepherds  and  breeders  of  goats,  cows, 
sheep  and  swine,  and  this  nomadic  life  was  kept  up  on  the  march 
from  their  first  to  their  second  home  in  the  southern  parts  of  what 
is  now  called  Russia.  Gradually  agricultural  arts  arose  and  that 
of  manuring  was  regarded  as  so  important  that  the  Romans  in- 
vented a  god,  Sterculius,  to  preside  over  the  process  of  manuring. 
The  plough  was  a  large  stick  pointed  like  a  hog's  snout,  drawn 
by  men  and  women.  He  thinks  that  overcrowding,  famine  and 
epidemics  drove  the  ancestors  of  the  Greeks  and  Italians  to 
Thrace,  Asia  Minor,  Greece  and  Italy,  and  that  the  Celts  were  the 
next  to  follow,  settling  across  the  Rhine,  while  the  Germans 
who  came  after  took  the  other  eastern  side  of  that  river.  Those 
who  remained  in  the  second  Aryan  home  were  the  Slavs.  Some 
of  the  changes  in  languages  may  have  been  due  to  contact  with 
the  original  inhabitants  conquered  by  the  Aryan  speakers.     The 

'  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  the  Indo-European,  Cosmopolis,  Sept.,  1896. 
*  Vorgeschichte  der  Indo-Europaer,  1894. 


SUPERSTITION.  I49 

regular  spring  exodus  of  young  people  from  Arya  and  later  set- 
tlements became  a  sacred  performance,  the  ver  sacrum,  there  were 
many  halting  places  between  the  Hindukush  and  the  Caucasus, 
and  a  long  rest  in  the  so-called  second  home  in  the  southern  parts 
of  Russia.  Professor  Jhering  discovers  in  customs  which  are 
utterly  unmeaning  and  absurd  some  former  object  which  accounts 
for  their  origin.  The  hasta  prseusta,  or  wooden  spear,  was 
thrown  into  the  enemy's  country  in  declaring  war  as  a  survival 
from  the  time  when  there  were  only  wooden  spears ;  priests  used 
stone  hatchets  in  their  sacrifices  long  after  iron  tools  were  com- 
mon, just  as  the  Jews  still  use  a  flint  knife  in  circumcision  be- 
cause the  original  silliness  was  started  in  days  when  there  were  no 
other  kinds  of  knives.  At  Rome  there  was  a  superstition  of  the 
kind  with  reference  to  the  Pons  Sublicius,  a  bridge  which  was 
under  the  special  care  of  the  Pontifices,  and  in  repairing  it  no  nail 
made  of  metal  was  allowed  to  be  used,  as  when  it  was  first  built 
•only  wooden  nails  were  known.  The  vestal  virgins,  "brides  of 
heaven,"  did  not  use  flint  against  flint  to  kindle  their  sacred  fire, 
but  rubbed  wood  together  instead  so  their  capers  are  thought  to 
date  from  a  period  earlier  than  the  stone  age. 

Professor  Jhering  sees  in  all  these  customs  the  tenacity  of  the 
Romans  in  preserving  whatever  was  old  and  venerable,  even 
after  it  had  lost  its  original  purpose.  He  looks  for  residua  of 
customs  which  admit  of  an  explanation  during  a  period  of  mi- 
gration, preceding  the  settlement  of  the  Italian  tribes,  but  which 
in  later  times  are  nothing  but  hollow  formalities  or  superstitions. 
Superstes  meaning  what  remains  over  Miiller  suggests  superstitio 
in  the  sense  of  survival,  or  of  something  kept  alive,  though  its 
original  purpose  is  forgotten,  and  its  real  life  gone.  He  traces 
the  present  name  of  the  priests  as  bridge  builders,  pontifices,  and 
their  duties  were  occasionally  to  throw  the  aged  over  to  the  fishes 
to  appease  the  river  gods  for  having  put  fetters  on  the  stream. 
Later  these  human  victims  were  replaced  by  a  manikin,  make- 
believe  man,  the  argei,  made  of  bulrushes. 

To  determine  serious  questions  the  priests  of  old  Rome  would 
note  how  and  which  way  birds  flew,  or  inspect  the  entrails  of  ani- 
mals, or  watch  a  chicken  eat,  and  such  silly  methods  were  gravely 
accepted  by  the  common  people  as  a  child  plays  at  "he  loves  me, 


15° 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


he  loves  me  not."  Jhering  says  there  must  be  a  reason  in  all  this 
unreason,  and  ascribes  the  customs  to  peculiar  circumstances  of 
the  Aryan  migrations,  that  they  were  all  originally  for  some  prac- 
tical purpose.  The  custom  of  regarding  the  sky  in  a  senseless 
way  came  down  from  the  need  of  watching  clouds,  winds  and 
distant  storms  at  midnight,  to  ascertain  whether  the  next  morn- 
ing would  be  fit  for  marching  or  fighting  or  remaining  encamped. 
The  fact  that  leaders  observed  the  clouds  was  noted  by  the 
rabble,  but  as  they  were  unable  to  understand  why  this  was  done 
of  course  imposters  arose  to  humbug  them  into  paying  for  all 
sorts  of  pretended  revelations  secured  in  such  and  similar  ways. 
This  was  the  signa  de  coelo  which  the  augurs  observed.  They 
also  had  the  signa  pedestria,  or  observation  of  the  ground,  never 
explaining  what  they  saw  by  examining  the  road,  and  in  fact 
ignorant  themselves  that  originally  the  scouts  looked  over  the 
route  for  foxes  that  might  eat  chickens  the  emigrants  took  with 
them,  also  for  snakes,  wolves,  etc. 

To  avoid  contaminated  water,  poisonous  plants,  as  grain, 
fruits  or  berries,  fowls  were  watched  as  they  were  fed  with  such 
suspected  articles,  and  so  the  appetites  and  often  the  intestines 
of  animals  were  inspected  to  see  if  what  the  country  produced 
were  safe  to  eat.  Cicero  (De  Div.  ii,  13)  is  referred  to  in  sup- 
port of  this  explanation.  When  the  original  meanings  of  these 
signs  were  lost  it  became  profitable  to  the  haruspices  to  keep  up 
the  imitation  of  intestine  examining  and  pretending  to  learn  all 
sorts  of  things  from  it  to  get  the  pennies  of  the  ignorant. 

Jhering  explains  the  signa  ex  avibus  of  the  auspices,  the 
watching  of  the  flight  of  birds,  as  having  originated  in  the  lead- 
ers noting  such  flights  to  find  passes  in  mountains,  as  birds  would 
fly  through  them  rather  than  over  peaks. 

Miiller  thinks  the  Aryan  barbarians  would  not  have  been  civ- 
ilized had  they  not  come  in  contact  with  the  Semites,  and  this 
would  account  for  European  civilization  coming  from  the  Ro- 
mans in  contact  with  Semites  in  more  ways  than  linguistically, 
explaining  the  loss  by  the  Romans  of  their  Aryan  blue  eyes  and 
yellow  hair,  which  the  Germanic  and  Celtic  savages  retained  till 
mixed  with  their  captives  from  the  Mediterranean  regions. 


SUPERSTITION.  I5I 

Max  Miiller^  states  that  in  1845  two  Roman  Catholic  mis- 
sionaries, Hue  and  Gabet,  were  startled  by  finding  in  Thibet  the 
sameness  of  the  Buddhist  and  Roman  ritual,  and  among  other 
things  the  coincidences  of  the  crosier,  dalmatic,  cope,  the  service 
with  two  choirs,  the  psalmody,  exorcism,  the  use  of  censers  held 
by  five  chains,  which  shut  and  open  by  themselves,  blessings 
given  by  the  lamas  in  extending  their  right  hand  over  the  heads 
of  the  faithful,  the  rosaries,  the  celibacy  of  priests,  spiritual  re- 
treats, worship  of  saints,  fastings,  processions,  litanies,  holy 
water,  etc.  Instead  of  the  Buddhists  borrowing  these  things 
from  the  Christians  it  was  found  that  the  Buddhists  had  them 
long  before  Christ  was  born.  Not  only  the  matters  mentioned, 
but  such  minor  affairs  as  confessions,  and  so  on,  are  mentioned 
in  the  Tripitaka,  the  bible  of  the  Buddhists,  and  dates  from  the 
council  of  259  B.  C,  when  Asoka  was  king,  as  admitted  by  schol- 
ars without  contention.  A  later  date  of  88-76  B.  C.,-  when  the 
Buddhist  laws  were  reduced  to  writing,  answers  just  as  well  to 
show  the  Buddhist  origin  of  the  Roman  Catholic  ceremonies  and 
ecclesiastical  rnillinery. 

The  fable  of  the  ass  in  the  lion's  skin  is  traced  back  to  the 
Buddhists  and  other  myths  to  ancient  Aryan  days. 

Miiller  thinks  that  Buddha  has  been  made  a  saint  by  the  early 
Christians  under  the  name  of  St.  Josaphat.  There  are  coinci- 
dences of  Buddha's  miraculous  birth,  the  star  over  the  house 
where  he  was  to  be  born,  the  old  Asita  waiting  for  his  advent,* 
and  dying  after  having  prophesied  the  greatness  of  Buddha  as 
the  ruler  of  an  earthly  or  of  a  heavenly  kingdom,  Buddha's  temp- 
tation by  Mara,  the  twelve  disciples,  his  special  love  for  one  of 
therri,  Ananda,  the  many  miracles  ascribed  to  him  and  his  out- 
spoken disapproval  of  miracle-working.  The  story  of  the  judg- 
ment of  Soloman  is  under  a  different  name  in  the  Buddhist  rec- 
ords, with  the  story  ending  "go  and  sin  and  no  more,"  the  story 
of  the  prodigal  son,  Buddha's  walking  on  the  river,  and  the  feed- 
ing of  the  multitude  on  a  single  cake,  with  many  cakes  left  over. 
Miiller  is  really  biased  against  accepting  the  origin  of  Christian 
ceremonies  and  teachings  from  ancient  sources,  but  upholds  ad- 

^  Coincidences,  Last  Essays,  p.  251. 


1^2  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

mitting  whatever  shall  be  proven  as  the  only  honest  course,  re- 
gardless of  results. 

The  man-like  ape,  the  gibbon  of  Java,  greets  the  rising  and 
setting  sun  morning  and  evening  with  cries  of  "Hoo-lock  or 
whoop-poo,"  and  the  natives  name  the  animal  from  this  sound. 
The  monkeys  with  the  absurdly  long  noses,  the  proboscis  mon- 
keys, assemble  in  large  numbers  in  the  mornings  and  evenings  at 
the  rising  and  setting  of  the  sun.  This  custom  with  the  greet- 
ing of  the  gibbons  could  be  studied  with  reference  to  the  Per- 
sian sun  worship.  Many  species  of  animals  and  numerous  tribes 
of  men  attach  importance  to  the  coming  and  going  of  the  sun, 
moon  and  stars  in  dififerent  ways,  but  all  with  regard  to  emo- 
tions aroused  by  the  changes  of  light  and  dark. 

The  principal  god  of  the  Parsees  or  Persians  was  the  god  of 
the  sun,  and  the  sun  itself  became  an  object  of  worship  among 
them  as  with  so  many  other  early  nations.  This  Mithras  of  the 
Persians  is  the  Helios  of  the  Greeks  and  the  Apollo  which  the 
Romans  acquired  from  the  Greeks,  and  sun  worship  is  clearly 
traced  through  all  these  names.  Manes,  the  founder  of  the  Mani- 
chsen  sect,  wished  to  identify  Christ  with  Mithras. 

Dogs  may  be  observed  turning  round  and  round  before  lying 
down,  and  at  other  times  scratching  backward  in  a  pretense  of 
throwing  dirt.  These  motions  are  ceremonial  survivals  from 
ancestral  jackals  who  trod  down  the  grass  by  this  turning  around 
process,  and  who  covered  excreta  with  earth.  It  is  likely  that 
Buddha  taught  the  Hindoos  to  avoid  touching  water  vessels  with 
their  mouths  to  prevent  disease  conveyance,  but  the  precaution 
lost  its  original  meaning  and  degenerated  into  a  mere  religious 
observance  kept  up  simply  because  Buddha  taught  it  and  for  no 
other  reason,  the  caste  regulation  requiring  the  water  to  be  poured 
into  the  mouth  from  the  jar  at  arm's  length. 

Savages  have  repeatedly  been  terrified  by  seeing  for  the  first 
time  men  on  horseback,  mistaking  them  for  a  single  animal,  and 
this  originated  the  idea  of  the  centaur,  the  mythological  half- 
horse  half-man.  In  this  class  of  monsters,  animals  with  six 
limbs,  hexapod  mammal  impossibilities,  we  find  angels  with  bird's 
wings  on  human  backs,  and  there  are  no  muscular  or  bony  at- 
tachments for  wings  in  human  backs  or  shoulders  unless  we  take 


SUPERSTITION, 


153 


the  arms  away ;  there  were  also  animals  such  as  the  bull  or  lion 
with  man's  head,  the  sphinx,  and  any  quantity  of  men  with  ani- 
mal heads.  The  Aard  Vark  or  earth  pig  of  Africa  with  the  long 
snout  can  be  the  Seth  of  Egypt,  and  the  Ant  Eater  of  South 
America  has  a  similar  snout.  The  baboon  was  consecrated  by 
ancient  Egyptians  to  the  god  Thoth.  Hermopolis  was  devoted 
to  the  worship  of  these  animals  and  Thebes  had  a  special  ceme- 
tery or  necropolis  for  their  mummies.  The  ibis  was  also  sacred 
to  the  Egyptians.  It  was  domesticated  and  bred  freely,  but  dis- 
appeared when  vmprotected.  It  was  the  emblem  of  Thoth,  the 
Secretary  of  Osiris,  and  was  embalmed  for  the  temples  in  great 
numbers.  It  was  known  in  India  as  the  curlew.  The  Egyptian 
cat  was  venerated  and  embalmed,  and  its  mummies  are  found  in 
tombs.  The  natives  of  Madagascar  fear  the  Aye-aye  as  having 
supernatural  power.  The  secret  by  which  it  can  be  disarmed  is 
claimed  by  a  few  persons,  and  this  claim  has  in  it  a  germ  of  a 
priesthood  that  can  charge  for  protecting  childish  minds  against 
imaginary  evils.  The  tiger  is  regarded  with  superstitious  rever- 
ence in  Hindustan,  and  parts  of  the  tiger  are  used  as  charms  and 
others  regard  these  relics  as  deadly  poisons.  Crocodiles  were 
worshipped  at  Thebes,  and  the  long-snouted  crocodile  was  held 
sacred  in  many  parts  of  India,  where  animal  worship  survived 
in  temples  with  ponds  where  there  were  special  priests  for  the 
''muggers"  or  crocodiles,  to  whom  men,  women  and  children 
were  fed  as  sacrifices.  In  parts  of  India  wayfarers  have  a  semi- 
religious  custom  of  tearing  a  strip  off  their  clothes  to  hang  on  a 
tree,  and  it  soon  becomes  loaded  with  rags  and  tatters,  which 
the  vultures  use  in  their  nest-making.  Left  handed  spiral  shells 
are  rare  and  are  sacred  to  the  Hindoos  and  Buddhist  priests  of 
Ceylon  and  China ;  the  rarity  of  the  cowrie  shell  makes  it  useful 
as  a  money  substitute  in  many  countries.  The  four-leafed  clover 
survives  with  a  superstitious  value  to  this  day.  The  Ainos  offer 
libations  of  saki  to  the  head  of  a  bear,  and  thousands  of  other 
instances  of  religious  regard  for  aftimals  could  be  cited.  In  South 
America  the  boa  is  eaten  and  its  fat  is  regarded  as  medicinal,  as 
some  simple  people  today  think  beaver's  oil  is  good  for  rheuma- 
tism. Skinks  are  lizards  adapted  to  burrowing  in  the  ground; 
they  are  short-tailed,  and  have  the  reputation  among  the  Arabs 


154  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

as  being  an  infallible  cure  for  almost  all  diseases.  The  flesh  is 
used  for  food  and  medicine.  The  reptile  gecko  is  supposed  to 
eject  venom  from  its  toes  and  to  leave  the  impress  of  its  body 
on  steel,  and  it  is  blamed  as  being  the  cause  of  leprosy  by  the 
ignorant  Egyptians.  In  old  England  and  down  to  comparatively 
recent  days  a  misconstruction  of  the  word  barnacle  caused  the 
superstition  to  spread  that  geese  were  at  times  formed  by  bar- 
nacles, and  there  are  old  pictures  extant  of  the  goose-barnacle 

tree. 

A  hundred  and  twenty  million  Hindoos  would  give  up  their 

lives  rather  than  harm  should  befall  the  Hanuman,  the  partic- 
ular kind  of  monkey  they  regard  as  sacred.  An  incredible  num- 
ber of  monkey  asylums  are  kept  up  in  India;  sixteen  hundred 
are  in  the  presidency  of  Bengal  alone,  sustained  by  the  poorest 
of  people.  The  dog-headed  Thoth  was  worshipped  by  Egyptians 
and  the  cat-headed  god  Pacht  was  supposed  to  preside  over  child- 
birth, and  cats  being  sacred  to  this  goddess  the  killing  of  a  com- 
mon cat  was  punished  by  death.     Tons    of    cat  mummies  are 

dug  up. 

Sir  John  Lubbock^  treats  of  religion  and  tells  of  a  Kaffir  puz- 
zling over  natural  events  without  result,  but  remarks  that  sav- 
ages as  a  rule  do  not  think  out  such  things,  but  adopt  the  ideas 
which  suggest  themselves  most  naturally,  and  notes  the  tendency 
of  authors  to  credit  such  races  with  higher  ideas  than  they  pos- 
sess. He  claims  that  the  deities  of  savages  are  evil  and  not  good ; 
these  gods  are  to  be  forced  into  compliance  with  man's  wishes ; 
they  require  bloody  and  rejoice  in  human  sacrifices ;  they  are 
mortal,  not  immortal,  a  part  of  and  not  the  author  of  nature; 
they  are  to  be  approached  by  dances  rather  than  prayers,  and 
sacred  dances  are  quite  common  with  savages  the  world  over ; 
and  these  gods  often  approve  of  what  we  call  vice  rather  than 
what  we  esteem  as  virtue. 

We  submit  to  deity,  the  savages  try  to  control  him ;  we  regard 
the  deity  as  good,  they  regard  him  as  evil ;  we  thank  the  deity 
for  blessings,  they  think  that  blessings  are  natural,  but  attribute 
all  evil  to  the  interference  of  malignant  beings. 

°  Origin  of  Civilization  and  Primitive  Condition  of  Man,  Ch.  IV. 


SUPERSTITION.  155 

Lubbock  divides  the  stages  of  religious  evolution  into  what 
can  be  essentially  condensed  in  these  words: 

Absence  of  any  notion  of  a  god  at  first.  • 

A  second  stage  where  nature  is  full  of  demons  who  can  be 
prevented  from  doing  harm,  Fetichism. 

Thirdly,  natural  objects,  such  as  trees,  lakes,  stones,  animals 
are  worshipped  (Totemism  or  nature  worship). 

Fourthly,  the  superior  deities  are  more  powerful  than  man 
and  are  of  a  different  nature.  Shamanism.  Their  place  of  abode 
is  also  far  away  and  accessible  only  to  Shamans. 

Anthropomorphism  comes  next,  or  man-shaped  idol  worship, 
in  which  the  gods  take  still  more  completely  the  shape  of  men, 
being,  however,  more  powerful.  They  are  still  subject  to  being 
persuaded ;  they  are  a  part  of  nature  and  not  creators.  They  are 
represented  by  images  or  idols. 

In  the  next  stage  the  deity  is  regarded  as  the  author  of  nature, 
and  becomes  for  the  first  time  a  supernatural  being. 

Finally,  as  the  last  and  highest  stage  morality  is  associated 
with  religion,  and  Lubbock  notes  that  Herbert  Spencer  regards 
moral  feelings  as  the  result  of  accumulated  experiences  of  utility 
gradually  organized  and  inherited. 

Honesty  has  been  associated  with  unhappy  consequences  and 
subterfuges,  and  lying  dishonesty  have  been  and  are  admired  still 
by  many  savage  and  barbarous  people  as  accomplishments,  but 
while  personal  honesty  has  been  found  to  be  inconvenient  the 
honesty  of  others  is  a  thing  to  be  praised  and  cultivated  because 
honesty  of  others  affords  the  happiest  consequences  to  yourself, 
hence  it  should  be  taught  to  others  and  encouraged  because  ben- 
efit to  self  may  occur  from  it. 

Our  ancestors,  says  Lubbock,  have  felt  that  some  things  were 
right  and  others  were  wrong,  but  at  different  times  they  have 
had  very  different  codes  of  morality.  It  was  right  to  steal  from 
strangers  or  to  murder  them  until  finally  it  ceased  to  be  the 
proper  thing  to  do.  Hence  we  have  a  deep-seated  moral  feeling 
but  no  decided  moral  code.  Children  have  a  feeling  of  right  and 
wrong,  but  do  not  have  an  intuitive  knowledge  of  what  is  right 
or  wrong.  A  child  whose  parents  belong  to  different  nations 
with  different  moral  codes  may  have  the  moral  feelings,  and  yet 


156  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

might  have  no  settled  ideas  as  io  particular  moral  duties.  It 
learns  these  from  others.  Authority  seems  to  Lubbock  to  be 
the  origin,  utility  and  criterion  of  virtue.  Parents,  preachers  or 
the  law  dictate  what  is  to  be  considered  proper,  the  child  is  not 
born  with  knowledge  of  it,  but  may  desire  to  do  what  others  re- 
gard as  right.  When  the  deity  was  regarded  as  beneficent  then 
he  became  moral,  and  not  before.  Savages  could  not  conceive 
of  a  good  god,  and  this  sacred  character  could  not  arise  until 
morality  had  been  appended  to  religion.  Today  among  civilized 
people  the  masses  entertain  a  mixture  of  beliefs  in  a  deity,  or 
several  gods,  who  are  good  and  evil,  moral  but  revengeful,  all- 
powerful,  knowing  everything,  and  yet  idiotic  in  their  exactions. 
The  good  person  attributes  all  his  moral  nature  to  his  deity,  but 
eiuthority  bids  him  believe  in  a  furious,  dangerous,  cruel  demon, 
who  is  the  same  as  the  good  god.  Much  primitive  foolishness 
and  clownish  behavior  survives  in  the  estimation  of  the  average 
deity  of  civilization. 

Spencer  supports  Tyler's  view  that  ancestor  worship  is  a  fac- 
tor in  religion  origin,  and  ghost  propitiation  is  a  consequence,  but 
Lubbock  holds  that  primitive  man  had  no  religion.  Ancestor 
regard  could  easily  have  arisen  through  the  parental  control  com- 
pelling the  children  to  abject  submissiveness,  which  was  event- 
ually more  or  less  an  inherited  condition,  and  among  unpro- 
gressive  tyrannical  people  it  could  become  exaggerated,  as  with 
the  Chinese,  but  among  advancing  nations  such  as  the  Americans 
this  is  reduced  to  parental  affection,  with  at  times  too  little  re- 
gard for  the  advice  of  ancestry.  Ol-d  men  among  savages  teach 
respect  for  themselves  and  enforce  it,  but  force  would  avail  noth- 
ing where  there  is  freedom  of  thought  and  public  education. 

Brinton^  says :  ''The  lowest  religions  seem  to  have  in  them 
the  elements  which  exist  in  the  ripest  and  noblest,  and  these  ele- 
ments work  for  good  wherever  they  exist.  However  rude  the 
form  of  belief  in  agencies  above  those  of  the  natural  world,  in  a 
higher  law  than  that  confessedly  of  solely  human  enactment,  and 
in  a  standard  of  duty  presented  by  something  loftier  than  imme- 
diate advantage,  such  a  belief  must  prompt  the  individual  to  a 
salutary  self-discipline  which  will  steadily  raise  him  with  nobler 

"^  Religion  of  Primitive  Peoples,  p.  215. 


SUPERSTITION.  I57 

conceptions  of  the  aims  of  life.  When  he  feels  himself  under 
the  protection  of  some  unseen  but  ever  near  beneficent  power 
his  emotions  of  gratitude  and  love  will  be  stimulated,  and  when 
he  recognizes  in  the  ceremonial  law  a  divine  prescription  for  his 
welfare  and  that  of  his  tribe  he  will  cheerfully  submit  to  the  rig- 
ors of  its  discipline."  Brinton  traces  the  lines  of  religious  thought 
through,  first,  the  primitive  social  bond.  Second,  the  family  and 
position  of  woman.  Third,  the  growth  of  jurisprudence.  Fourth, 
the  development  of  ethics.  Fifth,  the  advance  in  positive  knowl- 
edge. Sixth,  the  fostering  of  the  arts.  Seventh,  the  independent 
life  of  the  individual.  Speaking  to  the  gods  by  prayer  and  the 
alleged  speaking  of  the  gods  to  the  people  were  early  developed 
means  of  supposed  communication  maintained  by  a  variety  of 
motives  on  the  part  of  the  teacher  and  taught.  Fear,  hope  and 
to  gain  an  advantage  in  some  way  were  the  main  incentives. 
Captain  Clark^  says :  *'No  people  pray  more  than  Indians.  Both 
superstition  and  custom  keep  always  in  their  minds  the  necessity 
for  placating  the  anger  of  the  omnipotent  and  invisible  power, 
and  for  supplicating  the  active  exercise  of  his  functions  in  their 
behalf."  Stocks  and  stones,  says  Brinton,  were  never  worshipped 
as  such,  but  as  having  mysterious  power  to  influence  the  future. 
This  is  idolatry,  polytheism  or  fetichism,  and  a  species  of  anim- 
ism. The  idol  is  something  else  than  the  mere  object.  The  fetich 
spirit  lives  in  a  tree.  If  the  fetich  does  not  bring  luck  it  is  burned, 
thrown  away,  or  broken.  The  sale  of  lucky  talismans,  mascots, 
fetiches,  by  one  savage  or  another,  has  in  it  the  beginning  of 
priestcraft.  The  bethel  of  the  Hebrews  was  a  stone  the  god  was 
supposed  to  inhabit.  The  holy  kaaba  of  Mohammed  is  a  rough 
black  piece  of  rock,  a  substitution  or  reversion  to  the  idol 
worship  overthrown  by  his  sect.  The  Phrygian  image  of  the 
earth  brought  to  Rome  with  great  pomp  was  a  small  black  shaped 
stone.  There  is  a  survival  in  our  day  of  this  ancient  childishness 
in  the  belief  in  "lucky  stone"  mascots.  Trees  were  supposed 
by  some  tribes  to  make  the  rain,  an  inference  drawn  by  drip- 
ping moisture  condensed  by  the  foliage.  The  Chaldeans  had  a 
sacred  tree.  Innumerable  are  the  ceremonies  intended  to  avert 
the  wrath  and  gain  the  favor  of  the  gods  of  nature,  and  "solemn 
*  Indian  Sign  Language,  p.  309. 


158  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

nonsense"  exists  in  every  land  and  among  all  degrees  of  culture. 

Marriage  and  funeral  rites  soon  become  sources  of  profit  to 
special  classes  who  considered  it  their  privilege  to  preside  over 
the  superstitions  of  the  infantile  minds  of  savages,  and  their 
descendants  have  been  subjected  to  great  inconveniences  through 
the  greed  of  many  of  this  sacerdotal  trust.  For  instance,  in 
Puerto  Rico  and  the  Philippines  the  price  of  the  marriage  cere- 
mony was  so  absurdly  high  that  the  benighted  people  were  com- 
pelled to  mate  without  it  in  most  cases.  Where  there  is  direct 
profit  in  this  there  is  often  a  more  indirect  one  in  civilized  coun- 
tries, but  the  Spanish  provinces  had  not  advanced  to  that  stage. 
It  was  the  immediate  pay  that  was  sought  for  religious  services. 
To  the  Mohammedan  every  event  of  nature  and  life  is  an  imme- 
diate manifestation  of  the  power  of  God.^  Among  barbarians 
and  their  ancestry  echoes  were  mysterious,  and  a  word  had  the 
power  to  do  good  or  injury.  Some  Indians  dread  to  tell  their 
names  for  fear  others  will  gain  power  over  them  through  know- 
ing their  names.  Some  words  are  too  sacred  to  pronounce,  while 
ethers  will  defile  the  speaker.  Some  numbers  are  also  sacred 
and  our  figures  7  and  12  retain  much  of  this  superstitious  signifi- 
cance. The  carmen  or  charm  was  a  song  to  drive  away  demons, 
sometimes  given  with  medicines,  a  certain  class  of  which  are 
called  carminatives  in  this  day.  Virgil  said  that  a  special  carmen 
could  drag  the  moon  from  the  sky.  Resonant  words  like  ''Meso- 
potamia" thrill  the  simple  devout. 

Dreams  are  intimately  associated  with  the  lower  forms  of 
religion.  During  sleep  the  spirit  seems  to  desert  the  body.  And 
the  great  bulk  of  fairly  educated  persons  in  our  midst  are  not 
aware  that  dreams  are  caused  by  improper  action  of  blood  ves- 
sels in  influencing  the  registered  memories  in  the  gray  matter 
of  the  brain.  A  healthy  sleep  is  dreamless.  Greenlanders  believe 
in  dreams  and  think  that  at  night  they  go  hunting,  fishing  and 
courting.  When  savages  dream  of  dead  friends  or  relations  they 
firmly  believe  they  have  seen  them.  The  beastly  ventilation  of 
the  Eskimo  hut  is  well  calculated  to  poison  the  circulation  and 
afford  an  extensive  variety  of  dreams.  Among  uncultivated  peo- 
ple dreams  are  regarded  as  omens  and  means  of  communication 

"Brinton,  ibid.,  p.  40. 


SUPERSTITION. 


159 


between  the  gods  and  men.  Savages  ascribe  pain  as  caused  by 
their  enemies,  and  the  Australian  thinks  his  sleep  is  disturbed 
or  pain  is  caused  by  enemies  he  cannot  see.  So  the  delusions  of 
persecution  of  some  insane  persons  can  be  explained  as  an  en- 
feeblement  of  the  later  acquired  reasoning  power  that  enables 
correction  of  these  primitive  impulses  to  account  for  personal 
discomfort,  a  reversion  to  savage  brain  state ;  in  melancholia  ow- 
ing to  the  poisoned  circulation  placing  the  mental  faculties  in 
a  dream-like  state,  and  in  paranoia  through  suppression  of  the 
logical  process  direct,  often  by  deformity  of  the  brain.  The 
observation  of  shadows  and  reflections  in  the  water  of  himself 
and  others  impress  the  ignorant  wild  man  with  superstitious 
dread.  Kamschatkans,  Brinton  records,  relate  their  dreams  to 
each  other  every  morning  and  try  to  guess  their  meaning.  The 
Eskimos  regulate  their  daily  life  by  their  dreams  to  a  great 
extent.  Some  Brazilian  Indians  will  vacate  a  camp  if  one  dreams 
of  an  enemy's  approach.  Plants  that  caused  delirium  were  some- 
times taken  to  induce  visions  so  as  to  get  at  the  will  of  the  gods. 
Often  there  is  an  association  with  some  spiritual  meaning  of 
some  matter  observed  and  for  which  there  was  a  name,  such  as 
breath,  which  on  cold  days  these  early  progenitors  of  man  could 
see  in  the  frosty  fog  from  their  mouths.  We  have  Max  Mtiller's 
authority  for  spiritus  being  derived  from  spirare  to  draw  breath. 
The  same  applies  to  animus  from  anima,  air.  The  root  is  an, 
which  in  Sanskrit  means  to  blow.  Thus  the  Greek  thyein,  to 
rush,  to  move  violently,  originated  thymos  the  soul,  the  Sanskrit 
dhu  to  shake.  But  "abstract  names,"  says  Sir  George  William 
Cox,"  ''are  the  result  of  long  thought  and  effort,  and  they  are 
never  congenial  to  the  mass  of  men." 

Granger^^  says  "all  mythology  and  all  history  of  beliefs  must 
turn  to  psychology  for  elucidation,"  and  A.  H.  Post^^  holds  that 
"These  laws  of  human  thought  are  frightfully  rigid,  automatic 
and  inflexible.  The  human  mind  seems  to  be  a  machine ;  give  it 
the  same  materials  and  it  will  infallibly  grind  out  the  same  prod- 
uct.    So  deeply  impressed  by  this  is  an  eminent  modern  writer 

"Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  Vol.  I.,  p.  45. 

"  The  Worship  of  the  Romans,  p.  7. 

^^  Grundriss  der  ethnologischen  Jurisprudenz,  Bd.  I.,  V.  4. 


l6o  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

that  he  lays  it  down  as  a  fundamental  maxim  of  ethnology  that 
"we  do  not  think,  thinking  merely  goes  on  within  us!" 

Brinton  enumerates  five  special  stimuli  to  the  religious  emo- 
tions : 

1.  Dreaming  and  allied  conditions. 

2.  The  apprehension  of  life  and  death  from  which  arises  the 
notion  of  the  soul. 

3.  The  perception  of  light  and  darkness. 

4.  The  observations  of  extraordinary  exhibitions  of  force. 

5.  The  impression  of  vastness. 

Religions,  like  organisms  or  institutions,  have  a  natural  his- 
tory ;  they  rise,  spread  and  fade  away,  and  just  as  each  ignorant 
tribe  fancies  it  is  the  only  people  worth  saving  or  knowing  any- 
thing about,  so  it  claims  to  have  the  only  true  religion. 

Benjamin  Franklin  defined  superstition  as  religion  out  of 
fashion  and  religion  as  superstition  in  fashion.  "Orthodoxy 
was,"  furthermore,  "my  doxy,  and  heterodoxy  your  doxy."  There 
is  no  one  belief  or  set  of  beliefs  which  make  up  a  religion.  Budd- 
hism rejects  the  ideas  of  gods,  souls,  or  divine  government  of  the 
world;  the  Jewish  old  Testament  and  the  old  Roman  religion 
did  not  admit  existence  of  souls  or  immortal  life.  Some  believe 
in  souls  and  not  in  gods,  while  divine  government  is  rare  in  sav- 
age minds.  Savages  do  not,  as  a  rule,  recognize  principles  of 
good  and  evil  or  doctrines  of  reward  or  punishment  hereafter  for 
conduct  in  the  present  life."  The  happy  hunting  grounds  are 
for  those  who  are  brave  and  kill  enemies,  and,  among  the  Black- 
feet,  not  for  those  who  are  hanged,  but  these  are  exceptions  in 
the  beliefs  of  multitudes  of  other  savages. 

Belief  means  a  mere  impression  and  also  a  conviction  from 
evidence.  An  Irishman  defined  faith  as  that  God  given  faculty 
that  enabled  a  man  to  believe  what  he  knows  is  not  true.  The 
"beliefs"  of  the  past  and  present  are  beyond  computation,  but  a 
general  grouping  is  possible.  Fatalism,  for  instance,  pervades 
Mohammedanism,  Galvanism  and  numerous  other  religions.  The 
Greeks  were  firm  believers  in  fatalism,  and  that  man  could  not 
escape  his  destiny.  Even  today  there  are  fairly  intelligent  per- 
sons who  believe  that  the  insane  are  possessed  by  devils.  The 
American  Indian  sees  his  soul  in  the  mirror  or  stream,  the  Spir- 


SUPERSTITION.  l6l 

itualist  sees  telepathy  proved  by  the  x-ray.  Shapes  of  clouds,  vol- 
canic eruptions,  lightning  and  thunder,  all  unusual  things,  at 
once  are  grounds  for  superstitious  dread.  When  such  things 
become  familiar  and  constant  they  often  lose  their  superstitious 
interpretation.  "Astonished  at  the  performances  of  the  English 
plow  the  Hindoos  paint  it,  set  it  up  and  worship  it,  thus  turning 
a  tool  into  an  idol.    Linguists  do  the  same  with  language  !^^ 

"The  religious  inclination  of  man  is  part  of  his  mental  con- 
struction. In  the  nature  and  laws  of  the  human  mind,  in  its  in- 
tellect, sympathies,  emotions  and  passions,  lie  the  well-springs 
of  all  religions,  modern  or  ancient.  Christian  or  heathen;  to 
these  we  must  refer,  by  these  we  must  explain,  whatever  errors, 
falsehoods,  bigotry  or  cruelty  have  stained  man's  creeds  and  cults, 
and  to  them  we  must  credit  whatever  truth,  piety  and  love  have 
hallowed  and  glorified  his  long  search  for  the  perfect  and  the 
eternal.  Missionaries  would  not  recognize  as  religion  the  beliefs 
which  were  so  different  from  and  inferior  to  their  own.  Ghosts, 
magic  and  charms  were  superstitions.  Religion  is  shown  to  have 
existed  among  neolithic  men  by  numberless  sepulchers  of  peoples, 
massive  mounds  and  temples  such  as  Stonehenge  and  Karnac, 
by  tens  of  thousands,  their  idols,  amulets  and  mystic  symbols, 
their  altars  and  talismans.  But  palaeolithic  man  of  the  continen- 
tal glacier  period  left  nothing  to  show  he  had  religion.  The  tabu 
means  exile  or  death  for  taking  prohibited  articles  of  food  and 
drink,  for  infringing  laws  of  marriage  and  social  relation,  dispo- 
sition of  property  and  choice  of  wives.  The  Dyaks  of  Borneo 
consult  their  gods  on  all  occasions  of  business  or  journeying.  It 
shocked  the  Pueblos  to  see  white  settlers  planting  corn  without 
any  ceremony,  and  still  more  to  see  how  the  corn  flourished.  This 
did  more  to  shatter  their  simple  faith  than  a  dozen  missionary 
crusades.  Some  will  not  acknowledge  that  there  is  any  religion 
whatever  except  their  own,  all  other  beliefs  are  heresies,  aposta- 
sies and  heathenism.  A  protestant  denounces  Roman  Catholi- 
cism as  superstitious,  and  Quakers  regard  all  external  rites  as 
equally  superstitious."^* 

"  Herbert  Spencer,  Essay  on  Style. 
"  Brinton,  ibid.,  p.  27, 


l62  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Edward  Clodd^^  summarizes  myths  as  personifications  of  the 
powers  of  nature,  as  the  sun,  moon,  stars,  earth,  sky,  storm,  light- 
ning, Hght  and  darkness.  The  devil  was  the  king  of  all  the  agents 
of  disaster,  disease,  sorcery,  wizards,  enchanters,  who  had  sold 
their  souls  to  him.  "It  was  not  enough  for  the  ignorant  and 
frightened  sufiferers  to  accuse  some  misshapen,  squinting  old  wo- 
man of  casting  on  them  the  evil  eye  or  of  appearing  in  the  form 
of  a  cat,  to  secure  her  trial  by  torture  and  her  condemnation  to  an 
unpitied  death.  The  spread  of  the  popular  terror  led  to  the  issue 
of  proclamations  by  the  pope  and  statutes  in  England  and  other 
countries  against  witchcraft,  and  it  was  not  till  late  in  the  i8th 
century  that  laws  against  imaginary  crimes  were  repealed." 

There  is  a  barbaric  confusion  of  things  with  their  mere  names, 
and  among  a  certain  class  of  insane  of  the  paranoiac  type  there 
is  found  occasionally  a  positive  craze  as  to  the  mystic  meanings 
of  words,  seeming  as  though  this  word  reverence  were  a  rever- 
sion to  barbaric  ancestral  traits  of  many  thousands  of  years  ago. 
This  is  in  such  primitive  minds  associated  with  the  belief  in  the 
medical  or  superstitious  virtue  of  perfectly  worthless  things,  the 
reality  of  dreams,  a  theory  of  disease  being  caused  by  demons, 
witches  or  sorcerers,  the  evil  eye,  etc.,  belief  in  a  second  self  or 
soul,  in  the  souls  of  animals,  plants,  etc.,  and  in  a  soul's  dwelling 
place.  At  times,  as  in  India,  there  is  found  belief  in  the  change 
of  men  into  animals,  and  elsewhere  is  belief  in  descent  from 
plants  or  animals.  Myths  arise  secondarily  from  the  use  of  equiv- 
ocal words,  the  confounding  and  the  misinterpreting  of  ancestral 
or  foreign  fables,  just  as  children  get  things  mixed  today  and 
pass  them  on.  Such  an  instance  occurs  in  the  different  versions 
in  separate  languages  of  the  idea  of  the  seven  stars,  the  dipper, 
the  plough,  the  great  bear,  etc.,  an  account  of  which  is  given  by 
Cox.^^  There  may  occur  a  multiplicity  of  names  for  the  same 
object,  and  each  name  becomes  the  groundwork  of  a  new  myth, 
as  in  the  process  of  time  they  are  confounded  with  words  which 
most  nearly  resemble  them  in  sound.  There  is  a  tendency  to  local- 
ize mythical  incidents,  and  the  speech  of  mythology  is  very  elastic 
as  it  rests  on  tradition.    The  solar  myth  is  probably  most  exten- 

"  Myths  and  Dreams. 

"Mythology  of  Aryan  Nations,  Vol.  I.,  p.  47. 


SUPERSTITION.  163 

sive,  but  there  is  a  constant  demand  for  new  mythical  narratives, 
and  there  is  a  great  vitaHty  in  the  myth-making  faculties.  A 
transmutation  of  names  is  the  historical  groundwork  of  the  Ho- 
meric Mythology  and  the  Iliad  is  the  Volsung  tale  of  Norse  my- 
thology. Mythical  beings  gradually  become  historical  persons, 
and  there  is  a  great  sameness  about  all  tribal  legends.  Cox  points 
to  the  likeness  running  through  a  vast  number  of  the  popular 
tales  of  Germany,  Persia  and  Hindustan  owing  to  the  separation 
of  races  and  re-appearance  of  old  common  legends  from  a  time 
when  the  races  were  united  in  the  Aryans. 

In  Assyria  Bheki  or  the  frog  sun  is  represented  by  the  fish 
sun  to  show  half  of  his  time  spent  above  and  half  below  the 
waves.  This  fish  god  is  like  the  Aryan  Proteus  or  Helios.  As 
Oannes  or  Dagon,  the  fish  On,  he  is  the  great  teacher  of  the 
Babylonians,  and  his  name  is  seen  in  the  Hebrew  Bethaon,  the 
house  of  the  sun.  The  archbishop's  hat,  resembling  a  fish's  head 
with  eyes  and  mouth  of  the  fish,  is  a  direct  survival  of  the  head- 
gear of  the  priest  of  Dagon,  the  fish  god  of  Babylonia.  The  an- 
cient Romans  considered  the  river  gods  and  the  fish  god  very 
powerful,  and  fed  their  old  people  to  them  by  throwing  them 
from  the  bridges,  and  the  bridge  high  priest  was  therefore  called 
pontifex  maximus  from  pons,  bridge. 

There  is  a' vulgar  inclination  to  degrade  mythical  beings  to 
their  level  by  savages;  they  can  only  conceive  of  gods  as  big 
men,  and  the  big  man  idea  is  universal.  The  anthropomorphic 
attributes  become  adapted  to  the  low  instincts  of  the  savages  as 
their  gods  sink  to  their  comprehension.  Hence  you  can  explain 
better  to  an  Indian  why  the  sun  follows  the  dawn  by  telling  him 
that  each  is  like  ourselves  and  governed  by  human-like  motives, 
and  that  the  sun  chases  the  dawn  because  in  love  with  it. 

A  mythology  and  a  moral  belief  may  go  on  side  by  side  and 
struggle  for  supremacy  in  the  primitive  mind,  according  to  the 
receptivity  of  the  people,  but  the  mixture  does  not  mean  that  all 
are  influenced  alike  by  the  same  religion,  for  one  may  twist  the 
mythology,  as  Lord  Bacon  tried  to  do,  into  moral  interpretations, 
or  even  with  full  poetical  fancy  conceive  only  the  base  meaning, 
though  the  very  words  may  imply  higher  ideas.  Cox  says  :  "The 
child  who  will  speak  of  the  dawn  and  the  twilight  as  the  Achaian 


164  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

spoke  of  Prokno  and  Eos  will  also  be  cruel  or  false  or  cunning. 
There  is  no  reason  why  man,  in  his  earliest  state,  should  not 
express  his  sorrow  when  the  bright  being  who  had  gladdened 
him  with  his  radiance  dies  in  the  evening,  or  feel  a  real  joy  when 
he  rises  again  in  the  morning,  and  yet  be  selfish  or  cruel  in  his 
dealings  with  his  fellows."" 

From  the  old  Aryan  religion  sprang  those  beliefs  that  were 
found  scattered  through  Europe  from  Rome  and  Greece  to  Ger- 
many and  Ireland.  Dyaus,  Zeus,  Jupiter,  Zio  is  the  highest  god 
among  Hindoos,  Greeks,  Italiotes,  Germans  and  Norse.  The 
Semitic  religions  worshiped  Bel  or  Bael,  Belzebub,  El,  Malek, 
Adon,  Sar  as  supreme.  The  Jewish  Jehovah  and  Roman  Jupiter 
have  some  superficial  resemblances  of  sound  and  character,  but 
were  doubtless  developed  apart.  Of  course  the  Christian  reli- 
gion is  that  of  a  Jewish  sect.  The  Egyptian  appears  to  be  a 
mixture  of  early  Aryan  and  Semitic  worship,  while  other  African 
religions  are  those  of  the  Cushite,  Nigritoes,  Kaffirs  and  Hot- 
tentot, in  which  sun  and  moon  gods  are  prominent.  The  Chi- 
nese ancient  natural  religion  is  now  partly  superceded  by  Confu- 
cianism, the  philosophy  of  Kung-fu-tse,  who  was  merely  a  teach- 
er, and  Taoism,  a  revival  of  the  old  religion.  Several  centuries 
later  Chinese  Buddhism  arose.  The  Japanese  is  a  modified  Chi- 
nese, and  in  the  line  between  Asia  and  Europe  was  the  Finnic 
branch  of  the  Ural-Altaic  religion.  There  are  the  aboriginal 
ideas  of  the  American  Indians,  the  Malayo-Polynesians  original 
religion  displaced  by  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism  and  occasion- 
ally Christianity.    The  tabu  abounds  as  a  survival  among  them. 

W.  D.  Whitney  distinguished  between  religions  founded  by 
individuals  and  race  religions.  Zoroaster,  Christ,  Mohammed 
and  Buddha  made  headway  against  degenerate  notions.  All  of 
these,  with  Confucius  and  others,  have  been  reformers  who  re- 
sisted degrading  tendencies  of  the  past  priesthood.  But  in  time 
these  reforms  also  became  corrupt,  and  in  spite  of  a  teacher  re- 
fusing to  be  recognized  as  more  than  a  man  eventually  the  ad- 
herents would  worship  him.  Pleiderer^®  holds  that  religion  was 
at  first  an  indistinct  naturism,  in  which  natural  things  were  re^ 

"  Sir  George  Cox,  Mythology  of  the  Aryan  Nations,  Vol.  I.,  p.  39. 
^*  Religions  philosophic  auf  geschichtlicher   Gjundlage,  1884,  Vol.  II. 


SUPERSTITION.  165 

garded  as  living  powers ;  then  followed  the  worship  of  many 
gods  regarded  as  manlike  in  form  and  character;  then  came 
spirits  in  idol  shapes,  and  finally  the  conception  of  one  god  in 
nature.  C.  P.  Tiele^^  sums  up  the  stages  as,  first,  one  in  which 
every  object  had  life  (animism),  with  multitudes  of  demons  who 
could  be  controlled  by  magic.  Next  there  were  the  many  gods 
such  as  the  Greeks  and  Romans  had;  sacred  writings  gave  an- 
other shape  to  religion,  and  finally  principles  and  maxims  pre- 
vailed. Nature  religions  existed  in  which  the  oldest  contained 
germs  of  the  latest.  Man  regarded  all  nature  as  being  alive 
and  as  having  magical  power.  Some  of  these  living  things  were 
monsters  with  frightful  shapes,  some  of  which  survive  in  later 
mythologies,  the  sphinx,  the  centaur,  the  dragon,  etc.  This  has 
also  been  called  the  polyzoic  stage.  A  second  stage  of  animism 
developed  in  which  only  the  most  powerful  of  these  living  things 
were  worshipped,  with  spiritism  and  idolatry  prominent.  The 
first  period  of  animism  was  that  of  a  confused  mythology  in 
which  there  were  many  demons,  polydemonistic,  and  some  more 
powerful.  A  second  period  gave  implicit  belief  in  the  power  of 
magic,  accounting  for  the  high  veneration  in  which  sorcerers  and 
fetich  priests  are  held.  Third  came  the  predominance  of  fear 
over  all  other  feelings  and  the  performance  of  religious  acts  for 
selfish  ends  mostly.  As  when  a  Russian  bows  a  thousand  times 
to  his  icon  to  atone  for  some  sin. 

The  purified  magical  religions  were  the  connecting  link  be- 
tween the  polydaemonistic  magic  religion  and  the  many  shaped 
gods  stage,  anthropomorphic,  polytheistic,  animals,  men,  spirits 
mixed  together.  In  this  there  were  many  survivals  of  the  old, 
disguised  under  new  names.  The  more  recent  ethical  religions 
are  Christianity,  Buddhism,  Mohammedanism,  Confucianism, 
Mazdaism,  Mosaism,  Judaism. 

Ethical  attributes  become  ascribed  to  the  gods,  especially  the 
highest;  as  ideas  of  people  change  and  improve  they  are  apt 
to  assign  better  motives  to  their  gods.  Ethical  abstractions  and 
intellectual  abstractions  are  personified  and  worshiped  as  divine 
beings.  It  is  not  so  long  ago  when  there  was  a  serious  pro- 
posal to  make  an  apotheosis  of  humanity,  and  when  Huxley  was 

"Outline  of  the  History  of  Religion. 


l66  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

asked  what  he  thought  of  it  he  said  that  he  would  as  soon  think 
of  making  an  apotheosis  of  a  wilderness  full  of  apes.  But  those 
notions  occur  in  advanced  stages  of  nature  worship  and  are  often 
incorporated  with  the  old  religions.  Some  are  founded  by  one 
or  more  persons,  in  some  cases  by  a  body  of  priests  or  teachers, 
and  he  who  first  reveals  it  is  asserted  to  be  inspired,  and  it  is  said 
that  the  new  ideas  were  revealed  to  him.  Buddhism  had  an 
atheistic  tendency,  but  Buddha  was  finally  revered  and  worshiped 
as  the  Hindu  supreme  deity.  The  old  Aryan  was  mostly  anthro- 
pomorphic animism,  the  worship  of  man-shaped  gods  represent- 
ing natural  objects.  A  study  of  the  mythologies  of  all  peoples 
reveals  how  the  simple  minds  of  our  ancestors  tried  to  account 
for  the  beginning  of  things  in  wild  and  senseless  stories,  such 
as  children  would  invent,  of  the  origin  of  men,  sun,  stars,  ani- 
mals, death  and  the  world  in  general.  Pulling  these  gods  down 
to  their  own  understanding,  they  related  infamous  and  absurd 
adventures  of  them,  and  this  is  why  these  ancient  gods  were 
spoken  of  as  murderous,  adulterous,  incestuous,  thievish  and 
cruel,  cannibals,  and  wearing  the  shapes  of  animals,  and  that 
they  change  into  plants  and  stars  or  back  to  beasts  again ;  also 
why  there  are  such  repulsive  stories  of  the  states  of  the  dead,  the 
descent  of  the  gods  to  places  of  the  dead,  and  their  return. 

The  various  religions  can  be  concluded  under  either  nature 
or  ethical  headings,  the  nature  division  including  the  greater  sub- 
divisions, such  as  polydsemonistic,  magical  religions  under  control 
of  animism,  many  devils  in  nature,  entertained  by  savages  and 
uncivilized,  and  those  who  are  degraded  from  better  states,  then 
the  purified  or  organized  magical  religions  as  the  result  of  some 
reformer  getting  control  of  the  nonsense  and  compromising  with 
the  priests  who  lived  on  superstitions.  The  Therianthropic  Poly- 
theism unorganized  contained  the  oldest  Japanese,  Indian,  Arabic, 
Slavonic,  Italiote,  Grseco-Roman,  Etruscan  and  Finnish,  while 
the  later  organized  forms  were  found  in  Egypt,  Babylon,  China 
and  America.  A  later  worship  of  man-like  but  superhuman  and 
semi-ethical  beings.  Anthropomorphic  Polytheism,  affords  the 
ancient  Vaidic  of  India,  the  Iranic  of  Bactria,  Media  and  Persia, 
the  younger  Babylonian  and  Assyrian,  the  Semitic,  Phoenician, 
Canaanite,    Aramean,    Sabean,    Celtic,    Germanic,    Hellenic    and 


SUPERSTITION.  ,  167 

Graeco-Roman.  The  other  great  class,  the  ethical  religions,  con- 
tain religious  communities  depending  upon  sacred  books.  These 
are  Taoism  and  Confucianism  in  China,  Brahmanism,  Primitive 
Buddhism,  Zoroastrianism,  or  Mazdaism,  Mosaism,  Judaism,  and 
by  natural  selection  there  have  arisen  three  dominant  forms  di- 
viding the  world  between  them — Islamism,  Buddhism  and  Chris- 
tianity. 

As  to  primitive  ideas  Powell  says  the  North  American  Indians 
are  agitated  over  the  questions,  do  the  trees  grow  or  are  they 
created?  Some  take  the  ground  that  the  great  trees  like  the 
sequoia  are  created  just  as  they  are  found,  but  all  the  other  trees 
grow.  Somewhat  similar  to  the  notion  among  some  white  people 
that  man  was  created  as  he  is  found,  but  that  all  animals  may 
have  evolved. 

Powell  holds  to  four  stages  of  mythology,  whatever  happens 
some  one  does  it;  that  some  one  has  a  will  and  works  as  he 
pleases.  Personality  is  the  base  of  this  philosophy.  The  persons 
are  the  gods  of  mythology.    The  world  is  a  temple  of  gods. 

1.  In  the  lowest  and  earliest  stage  everything  has  life,  per- 
sonality, will,  design;  animals  have  all  the  power  of  mankind, 
all  inanimate  objects  are  supposed  to  be  alive,  trees  think  and 
speak,  stones  have  loves  and  hates,  the  hills,  waters  and  stars  are 
alive.     Everything  is  a  god,  hecastotheism. 

2.  Then  follows  discrimination  between  the  dead  and  living 
things,  between  the  animals  and  the  inanimate,  but  the  animals 
still  have  human  traits :  Zootheism  when  men  worship  beasts. 
Everything  is  done  by  these  gods. 

3.  A  wide  stage  then  develops  between  man  and  animals. 
The  animal  gods  are  dethroned ;  physitheism.  The  gods  become 
strictly  man-shaped,  anthropomorphic.  Hence  there  are  gods  of 
the  sun,  of  the  day,  air  and  night,  etc. 

4.  Mental,  moral  and  social  characteristics  are  personified 
and  deified.  Thus  we  have  a  god  of  war,  of  love,  of  revelry,  of 
plenty. 

This  may  be  called  psychotheism,  which  develops  into  one 
god  worship,  monotheism,  and  then  pantheism,  the  one  god  being 
everywhere. 

The  invention  or  adoption  of  the  alphabets  runs  parallel  in 


l68  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

races  with  psychotheism,  and  all  these  stages  may  exist  by  sur- 
vival at  the  same  period.  As  an  outgrowth  of  mythological  phi- 
losophy Powell  mentions  *'ancientism,"  or  the  belief  that  yester- 
day was  better  than  today,  that  the  ancients  were  wiser  than  we, 
a  belief  quite  universal.  Yesterday  is  greater  than  today  by 
natural  exaggeration  and  absorption  of  beliefs  from  older  gener- 
ations. China  is  satisfied  with  ancient  teaching  only.  So  recent 
periods  are  considered  as  degenerate  and  man  has  become  lower 
than  he  originally  was. 

Another  outgrowth  of  superstition  was  the  idea  that  the  gods 
had  families,  and  spiritism  notions  came  from  dreams  in  which 
there  were  strange  scenes  and  wonderful  activities,  memories  of 
scenes  and  experiences  of  former  days  and  inherited  memories 
of  scenes  witnessed  and  actions  performed  by  ancestors  are 
blended  in  strange  confusion  by  broken  and  inverted  sequences. 

Great  men  when  they  die  have  a  tendency  to  becoine  wor- 
shipped as  gods.  The  ancient  Egyptians  promoted  their  gods 
until  Amon  was  made  the  biggest,  and  finally  the  kings  succeeded 
in  being  worshipped  just  as  they  would  today  if  they  could,  judg- 
ing from  Emperor  Wilhelm's  remarks.  Then  as  the  Emperor 
Hadrian  caused  Antinous,  his  favorite  adopted  son,  to  be  wor- 
shipped as  a  god,  so  there  was  a  direct  creation  of  deities  through 
mere  imperial  caprice.  Conquerers  often  converted  the  gods  of 
the  conquered  into  devils,  or  when  concessions  had  to  be  made 
the  two  religions  mixed  and  old  ceremonies  took  new  forms  and 
surroundings.  The  Christians  permitted  many  old  gods  to  be 
saints,  and  festivities  such  as  Yule  Tide,  Noel  and  Weihnachtsfest 
and  the  Saturnalia  passed  into  the  new  observances. 

Indefinite  old  legends  keep  people  on  the  alert  for  the  pre- 
dicted end  of  the  world,  etc.  The  Aztecs  were  overwhelmed 
with  superstitious  regard  for  the  Spaniards,  and  Montezuma 
looked  upon  them  as  the  predicted  children  of  the  sun  who  were 
to  come  from  the  east  again,  the  former  Quetzalcoatl.  After 
Montezuma's  death  he  took  the  place  of  the  expected  one  in  the 
minds  of  the  simple  Mexican  Indians,  and  nowadays  a  watch  is 
kept  by  a  sentinel,  who  looks  every  morning  to  the  sunrise  for 
Montezuma's  return.  For  four  hundred  years  fires  had  been 
kept  burning  on  Mexican  Catholic  church  altars  as  part  of  the 


SUPERSTITION.  1 69 

old  Aztec  Montezuma  worship  surviving  among  new  surround- 
ings. 

Very  childish  were  some  of  the  ancient  notions  that  sufficed 
to  found  a  religion.  A  great  Chinese  philosophy  is  based  upon 
a  system  of  three  lines  similar  to  the  markings  on  the  back  of  a 
tortoise  and  this  inclination  to  symbolism  we  find  among  certain 
logically  defective  insane  among  the  civilized. 

Extensive  religious  movements  have  originated  in  conditions 
behind  the  apparent  ones.  Peter  the  Hermit  and  his  harangues 
have  been  blamed  for  the  first  crusades,  but  the  crying  agricul- 
tural, social  and  political  needs  were  the  main  incentives,  and 
the  church  gave  the  impulse  to  the  movements.-^ 

Devastating  plagues  that  sweep  the  world  originate  in  centres 
of  densest  ignorance,  to  be  conveyed  with  lessened  effect  to  rela- 
tively more  enlightened  parts.  This  relativity  is  with  reference 
to  increased  cleanliness  as  to  food,  habits,  intercourse,  ideas, 
knowledge  of  the  environment,  and  decreased  religious  fervor, 
disposition  to  be  priest-ridden,  dirty,  credulous,  superstitious, 
and  brutal  generally.  The  thoughtful,  cleanly  races  are  the 
breakers  against  which  the  pestilence  rages  in  vain,  and  the 
bigoted,  uncleanly,  superstitious  afford  the  materials  for  its  in- 
crease and  spread.  The  oriental  pilgrimages  to  Mecca  and  the 
Upper  Ganges  are  the  means  by  which  cholera  is  propagated. 
In  these  "holy"  spots  the  multitudes  of  devout  swarm  and  reek, 
the  filthy  ''holy"  wells  from  which  they  drink  and  in  which  they 
bathe  have  accumulated  ages  of  defilement.  Dr.  Shakespeare 
says  it  would  require  two  soldiers  to  each  pilgrim  to  preserve 
order  and  cleanliness  and  induce  observance  of  the  ordinary 
decency  or  precautions  against  the  spread  of  all  sorts  of  diseases 
that  are  fostered  by  filth.  When  Mecca  is  the  starting  point  the 
disease  takes  the  southern  Mediterranean  route  through  Italy 
and  Spain.  Here,  again,  ignorance,  superstition  and  filth  give 
it  fresh  impetus.  Physicians  are  accused  of  being  responsible  for 
the  plague  and  are  slain,  the  shrines  that  Garibaldi  closed  up  are 
opened  again,  and  the  dirty  wretches  crowd  about  their  wooden 
and  stone  images  imploring  relief  from  them. 

***  Prutz  Kulturgeschichte  der  Kreuzziige. 


lyo  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

When  India  is  the  starting  point  the  famine-stricken,  abjectly 
ignorant  and  religious  peasantry  of  Russia  afford  fertilization 
enough  to  kill  three  thousand  daily.  Physicians  are  also  mur- 
dered in  that  country. 

As  Balzac  says^^ :  "If  any  good  is  to  be  done  we  come  into 
collision  not  merely  with  vested  interests  but  with  something  far 
more  dangerous  to  meddle  with,  religious  ideas  crystallized  into 
superstitions,  the  most  permanent  form  taken  by  human 
thought." 

Votaries  of  a  religion  of  blood  are  not  all  cruel,  for  even  in 
Thibet  there  are  lamas  who  dislike  the  spirit  dances,  cruelty  and 
deceit,  and  are  made  to  suffer  for  their  humanity  by  other  lamas. 

Similarly  many  excellent  monks  and  priests  have  tried  to  stem 
the  torrent  of  most  pernicious  systems.  The  very  best  men  in 
any  organization  will  often  be  among  the  lowest  in  rank,  and 
where  intriguery,  politics,  wire-pulling,  conspiracy  exist  the  very 
worst  are  often  at  the  top.  Savonarola,  in  the  fifteenth  century, 
fought  for  purity  of  his  church,  and  so  did  Luther  in  the  six- 
teenth, both  against  corruption  in  high  places  which  trod  upon 
the  sincere,  devout  and  lowly  in  the  ranks  of  the  monks  and 
priests. 

Many  an  enthusiastic  missionary  has  been  sent  to  the  canni- 
bals, and  the  reveling,  feasting  superiors  at  home  point  to  his 
history  as  evidence  of  how  good  the  order  is.  But  there  are  good 
and  bad  everywhere  and  in  every  organization,  but  so  long  as 
men  seek  office  the  selfish  schemer  will  usually  be  highest  in  both 
church  and  state. 

Christ,  Confucius,  Savonarola,  Buddha,  Luther  were  all  re- 
formers, and  suffered  in  consequence,  and  the  history  of  religions 
is  full  of  the  failure  of  attacks  of  reformers  upon  vested  in- 
terests. 

The  basic  motives  for  certain  measures  or  opposition  thereto 
are  often  amusingly  revealed  in  queer  combinations,  such  as  the 
conjoint,  clerical  and  saloonkeepers'  movement  to  close  the 
world's  fair  on  Sunday  in  Chicago;  the  liquor  dealers  outside 
wanted  to  draw  custom  to  themselves  by  closing  the  fair. 

'^Le  Medecin  de  Campagne. 


SUPERSTITION*  17^ 

The  efforts  of  Dr.  Holt  of  New  Orleans  in  fighting  yellow 
fever  were  made  unnecessarily  troublesome  by  many  selfish  in- 
terests opposed  to  work  wholly  for  the  public  good.  He  found 
powerful  political,  clerical  and  mercantile  enemies,  intent  upon 
some  comparatively  trifling  gain,  arrayed  against  him,  and  occa- 
sionally a  press  subsidized  in  the  interests  of  ignorant  and,  in 
this  instance,  murderous  greed. 

Chicago  luminaries  representing  the  "Department  of  Reli- 
gion" at  the  World's  Fair  summoned  a  congress  of  teachers  and 
members  of  all  faiths  to  indicate  how  deep  were  the  foundations 
of  theism  and  faith  in  immortality,  blandly  and  densely  unaware 
that  many  highly  developed  religions  have  neither  belief  in  deity 
or  immortality. 

There  is  no  evidence  that  man  was  aboriginally  endowed  with 
a  belief  in  a  god,  and  races  exist  without  an  idea  of  deity.  Mis- 
sionaries among  the  Northwest  tribes  of  American  Indians  had 
to  invent  an  expression  for  the  soul  by  stating  it  was  an  "intes- 
tine that  never  rotted" ;  the  old  word  sacrum  had  the  same  sig- 
nificance among  the  ancient  Romans  as  a  bone  that  never  per- 
ished. 

Fuegians  thought  that  if  food  were  wasted  storms,  wind  and 
rain  came  as  a  punishment.  As  Lubbock  remarked,  "a  horrible 
dread  of  unknown  evil  hangs  over  savage  life  and  embitters 
every  pleasure,"  and  it  is  the  unseen  terror  that  appalls  the  most, 
the  unknown,  that  is  dreaded  more  than  anything  known. 

In  keeping  with  the  lowest  races  being  the  most  superstitious, 
David  Hume  asks :  "What  age  or  period  of  life  is  most  addicted 
to  superstition  ?  The  weakest  and  most  timid.  What  sex  ?  The 
same  answer  may  be  given.  The  leaders  and  examples  of  every 
kind  of  superstition,  says  Strabo,  are  the  women." 

In  the  Cathedral  of  St.  Peter  at  Rome  is  the  spear  of  St.  Lon- 
ginius,  which  is  said  to  have  been  found  in  Jerusalem  by  the  Em- 
press of  Germany,  Helena,  the  mother  of  Constantine.  In  1492 
the  Sultan  of  Bejazet  sent  the  lance  to  the  pope  from  Constan- 
tinople. But  there  is  a  rival  lance  at  Vienna,  and  each  has  its 
adherents  that  it  was  the  one  that  pierced  the  side  of  Christ.  The 
cardinals  remain  neutral.    There  are  also  two  skulls  of  St.  John 


172  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

on  exhibition  at  rival  churches  in  Rome,  both  of  which  are  offi- 
cially declared  to  be  authentic  by  a  special  miracle. 

The  Basilica  was  replaced  by  St.  Peter's  church  and  all  the 
best  marbles  of  ancient  temples  were  used  in  building  the  new 
temple.  Even  the  statue  of  that  saint,  with  its  great  toe  kissed 
away,  is  a  copy  of  the  Capitoline  Jupiter  cast  from  bronzes  of 
the  pagan  gods.  So  the  rehabilitation  of  Rome  physically  is  par- 
alleled by  its  spiritual  resurrection.  "The  ghost  of  pagan  Rome 
sits  on  its  own  grave." 

Probably  one  of  the  most  fantastic  superstitions  on  record  was 
caused  by  the  crusaders  bringing  back  milk  in  bottles  which  they 
sold  as  the  milk  of  the  Virgin  Mary,  and  a  piece  of  the  finger  of 
the  holy  ghost.^^ 

Comical  instances  of  inconsistency  come  down  to  us  from  not 
only  historical  but  archaeological  periods,  such  as  when  John, 
1204,  turned  his  back  on  the  mass  and  scoffed  at  the  priests,  but 
never  started  on  a  journey  without  hanging  relics  around  his 
neck.^^  Dr.  Clay,  the  Babylonian  archaeologist,  showed  me  an 
inscription  which  he  interpreted  to  mean  that  ''this  valuable  piece 
of  lapiz  lazuli  is  presented  to  the  god  Baal  by  a  devout  wor- 
shipper," and  the  offering  is  a  worthless  piece  of  glass  palmed 
off  upon  the  deity ;  this  was  from  the  Nippur  collection,  dating 
back  beyond  the  days  of  Abraham. 

The  Delphian  oracles  were  as  glib  in  explaining  away  their 
failures  of  prophecy  as  a  modern  clairvoyant.  "Croesus,  after  his 
defeat  and  captivity,  sent  messengers  to  reproach  the  Delphian 
oracle  with  misleading  to  ruin  by  false  predictions  one  who  had 
merited  the  favor  of  the  gods  by  the  magnificence  of  his  offerings. 
He  gave  so  much  the  oracles  thought  they  must  make  him  happy 
with  good  luck  promises.  They  replied  that  his  fifth  ancestor 
had  sinned,  and  Croesus  had  to  expiate  his  crime. "^* 

Advance  and  ambition  led  Croesus  against  the  Parthians,  but 
superstitious  terrors  hampered  him.  A  Roman  tribune  devoted 
him  to  the  infernal  gods  with  solemn  nonsense.  Prodigies  were 
seen  in  his  crossing  the  Euphrates  and  treachery  took  advantage 

"Draper,  Conflict  of  Religion  and  Science,  p.  276. 
'^  Green,  History  of  England,  p.  152. 
'"Herodotus,  I.,  91. 


SUPERSTITION.  I73 

of  his  fears  to  turn  him  against  his  friends  and  lead  him  to  his 
enemies.  The  Parthians  fell  upon  his  army  with  frightful  noises, 
knowing  that  the  heart  can  be  appalled  by  din. 

Xenophen  said  that  "the  Lacedemonians  always  during  a  war 
put  up  their  petitions  early  in  the  morning  in  order  to  be  before- 
hand with  their  enemies,  and  by  being  the  first  solicitors  pre- 
engage  the  gods  in  their  favor.  Early  mass  may  be  for  similar 
reasons. 

Another  survey  of  superstitious  fear  may  be  stated  as  at  first 
indefinite,  unorganized  and  scarcely  classifiable,  merely  a  lot  of 
childish  fears  and  notions  generally.  Then  a  few  persons  dis- 
cern a  chance  to  make  a  profit  out  of  these  fears  and  organize 
the  mythologies,  and  in  the  course  of  time  a  few  reformers  seek 
to  cut  off  some  absurdities,"  but  the  sorcerers  fear  loss  of  their 
power  and  object  to  any  changes  of  the  kind.  Finally  some 
changes  occur  by  outside  pressure  to  which  the  priesthood  is 
compelled  to  adjust  itself,  and  a  stronger  system  may  appear 
from  the  outside  and  the  old  and  new  beliefs  commingle.  After 
a  while  men  grow  to  higher  notions,  and  some  of  these  become 
incorporated  with  the  idea  of  gods.  Things  of  any  note,  good 
or  bad,  are  apt  to  be  credited  to  the  gods.  The  highest  ideas 
finally  become  severed  from  rewards  and  punishments,  and  exist 
by  themselves  without  fear  or  favor,  and  separate  themselves 
from  creeds  or  beliefs.  Notwithstanding  the  superstitions  and 
often  evil  nature  of  early  religions  the  ethical,  particularly  among 
Christians,  that  has  developed  upon  this  unpromising  ground- 
work, is  among  well-disposed  civilized  persons  a  feeling  of  reli- 
gious devotion  that  is  highly  complex,  and  consists  of  love,  sub- 
mission to  a  mysterious  superior,  dependence,  fear,  reverence, 
gratitude,  hope  and  other  elements.  The  deep  love  of  the  dog 
for  its  master  has  been  compared  to  it. 

Babism^^  arose  as  a  protest  against  corruption  in  the  Moham- 
medan church.  Believers  in  it  were  those  who  thought  it  was 
the  fulfilling  of  the  Koran,  those  who  saw  in  it  hope  of  national 
reform,  mystics,  and  those  to  whom  the  teaching  appeals  in  a 
general  way,  and  finally  in  America  those  who  believe  Babism 
as  a  fulfillment  of  Christianity.  A  million  converts  exists,  three 
^'^  E.  D.  Ross,  Prof.  Persian.  Gal.  Univ.,  N.  A.  Review,  April,  igoi. 


174  THE  ^VOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

thousand  of  whom  are  in  America,  and  a  third  of  these  in  Chi- 
cago. 

Mormonism  flourished  since  its  originating  period,  which  ex- 
tended from  1805  to  1830,  when  Joseph  Smith  fabricated  some 
silly  revelations  which  he  engraved  on  metal  plates  and  buried, 
and  later  dug  up  and  interpreted  by  means  of  a  holy  piece  of 
transparent  stone.  The  inscriptions  are  just  such  trashy  marks 
as  a  plough  boy  ignorant  of  anthropology  in  any  form  could 
originate.  A  community  was  started  in  Nauvoo,  Illinois,  which 
was  driven  out  and  took  refuge  in  Salt  Lake  City,  Utah,  where 
polygamy  became  a  leading  feature  of  the  cult.  These  barbarous 
settlers  at  Mountain  Meadow  in  1857  massacred  a  company  of 
emigrants  who  were  passing  through  their  country,  and  in  other 
ways  their  violations  of  law  and  affronts  to  decency  led  to  their 
final  overthrow,  at  least  as  to  sacerdotal  strength.  It  is  told  of 
Brigham  Young,  their  late  leader,  that  he  contrived  his  apparent 
death  with  the  intention  of  resurrecting  himself,  to  make  a  strong 
impression  upon  the  Mormons,  but  his  rivals  managed  that  he 
should  not  be  resurrected. 

The  great  religious  controversy  of  the  4th  century  over  the 
mystery  of  the  trinity  was  settled  by  the  triumph  of  the  doctrine 
of  Athanasius  over  Aurius ;  then  arose  a  still  more  bitter  dispute 
over  the  mystery  of  the  incarnation.  Bloody  tumults,  murders 
and  fierce  revolutionary  conspiracies  followed  for  sixty  years 
over  the  question  whether  there  was  one  nature  or  two  natures 
in  Christ. 

Monarchs  alone  often  gave  impetus  to  the  most  cruel  instincts. 
From  1555  to  1559  occurred  the  opening  of  the  dark  and  bloody 
reign  of  Philip  II  of  Spain.  Malignity,  perfidy,  evil  and  plotting 
industry  with  slavish  superstition  marked  this  period. 

The  original  society  of  Assassins  was  an  order  like  the  Tem- 
plars, a  branch  of  the  Egyptian  Ishmaelites,  with  the  motto  "Be- 
lieve nothing  and  dare  everything."  They  would  kill  a  sultan 
or  commit  suicide.  Of  an  opposite  character  were  the  mystics 
of  the  17th  century  with  their  theory  of  abstract  contemplation 
to  find  out  God.  Quietism  it  has  been  called.  It  was  enough 
to  induce  imbecility,  but  a  similar  introspective  fit  resulted  in 


SUPERSTITION.  I75 

Ignatius  de  Loyala  founding  an  order  ''for  the  greater  glory  of 
God"  that  filled  the  earth  with  trickery,  woe  and  blood. 

Through  the  fragmentary  sayings  of  Mohammed  runs  the 
idea  of  the  unity  of  God,  his  sovereignty,  his  terrible  might  and 
yet  his  compassion.  Merely  a  man's  conception  of  deity,  as  that 
of  a  big  man,  strong,  angry,  malicious  and  sometimes  forgiving. 
The  Islam  religion  admits  five  prophets  before  Mohammed,  each 
greater  than  the  previous  ones :  Adam,  Noah,  Abraham,  Moses 
and  Jesus.  Mahdi  is  to  be  the  highest.  Those  claiming  to  be 
the  Mahdi  are  beyond  number  among  the  Persians,  Turks,  Egyp- 
tians and  Arabs  of  the  Soudan.^^ 

The  Flaggellants  of  the  14th  century  thought  they  could 
please  God  by  scourging  themselves,  because  they  distrusted  the 
church  and  priests  as  means  of  intercession.  The  order  spread 
rapidly  over  Europe  till  the  pope  finally  suppressed  it. 

It  is  an  important  matter  to  decide  why  there  is  such  a  thing 
as  religious  hatred  and  prejudice?  Why  the  odium  theologicum? 
Is  it  a  part  of  the  oifence  when  others  merely  differ  with  you  on 
any  topic?  Some  cannot  stand  contradiction  of  any  kind.  But 
it  must  be  deeper  rooted,  for  religious  intolerance  is  deep  and 
fades  only  as  all  religion  is  given  up,  and  even  then  the  atheist 
can  be  intolerant  and  hate  the  reHgious  and  see  no  good  in  them. 
Prescott,  in  his  history  of  Cortez,  speaking  of  the  horrible 
Aztec  human  sacrifices  and  the  equally  cruel  Spanish  conquests, 
says  "strange  that  the  most  fiendish  passions  of  the  human  heart 
have  been  those  kindled  in  the  name  of  religion."  "God-fearing 
armies  are  the  best  armies,"  says  Carlyle,  and  Bagehot  notes  that 
''high  concentration  of  feeling  makes  men  dare  everything  and  do 
everything." 

The  poor  crazy  lass  Joan  of  Arc,  with  her  ideas  of  having 
direct  commands  from  heaven,  managed  to  fire  the  confidence 
and  courage  of  the  French,  who  for  a  hundred  years  had  been 
scurrying  away  from  English  invaders.  Religious  conviction 
made  the  French  formidable,  which  they  had  not  been  previously. 
Cromwell  recognized  the  value  of  bigotry  in  war  and  effectively 
used  it. 

^The  Mahdi,  Past  and  Present,  Ch.  i,  p.  2,  J.  Darmsteter. 


1^6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Patricius  Christianized  Ireland  long  before  there  was  a  pope, 
so  the  Irish  did  not  recognize  his  right  to  'Teter's  pence,"  a 
penny  tax  on  every  house^  but  Henry  II  of  England,  to  appease 
the  pope  for  Becket's  murder,  offered  to  coerce  Ireland  to  popery, 
and  Dermond  Macmurragh,  a  king  of  Ireland,  betrayed  his  coun- 
try to  the  English.  Such  matters  are  usually  unmentioned  in  the 
average  histories,  even  though  Macauley,  Pepys,  Dickens,  or  other 
fact-seekers  record  them.  You  do  not  encounter  such  observa- 
tions often  as  that  ''Friar  Tetzel,  with  a  bad  character,  sold  in- 
dulgences to  beautify  St.  Peter's  at  Rome,  and  Henry  VIII 
abused  Luther  for  daring  to  find  fault  with  Tetzel,  and  hired  Sir 
Thomas  Moore,  whom  he  afterwards  beheaded,  to  write  a  book 
at  which  the  pope  was  so  well  pleased  he  gave  Henry  VIII  the 
title  "Defender  of  the  Faith,"  and  the  same  king  abandoned  pope, 
church  and  former  faith  and  became  intemperate  in  matters  of 

wives. 

Charles  Dickens,^^  in  simple  language  describes  the  great  reli- 
gious commotion  when  thousands  of  all  ranks  and  conditions 
left  for  Jerusalem  on  the  first  crusade.  "All  were  not  zealous 
Christians.  Vast  numbers  were  restless,  idle,  profligate  and  ad- 
venturers; some  went  for  love  of  change  or  in  hope  of  plunder, 
some  because  they  had  nothing  to  do  at  home,  some  because  the 
priests  told  them  to  go,  some  to  see  foreign  countries,  others  to 
knock  men  about  and  would  as  soon  knock  a  Turk  about  as  a 
Christian."  Sir  J.  Stephen-^  dwells  on  the  great  "brutality  and 
destructiveness  of  the  crusaders,"  as  have  other  historians,  but 
the  popular  notion  is  slow  to  expire  that  these  invasions  were 
wise  and  divinely  directed.  They  were  really  the  means  of  work- 
ing off  surplus  energy  directed  by  bigotry  and  ignorance,  and 
the  blood  letting  that  resulted  quieted  Europe  somewhat,  but  not 
till  several  failures  had  been  made  in  the  same  line. 

The  castes  of  India  are  based  upon  "purity  of  blood."  An 
infinite  number  of  castes  are  grouped  under  four  kinds,  the 
priests  or  Brahmans,  the  soldiers,  the  merchants  and  the  servile 
class.  They  love  to  think  that  their  universal  classification  of 
different  castes,  as  the  mouth,  arms,  thighs  and  feet  of  Brahma 

"  Child's  History  of  England,  p.  57. 
^  Lectures  on  History  of  France. 


SUPERSTITION.  I77 

is  a  divine  arrangement.  They  are  exclusive  and  will  not  eat 
or  marry  out  of  their  castes.  Of  course  the  Brahmans  increased, 
as  they  were  to  be  supported  by  charity.  There  are  fourteen  mil- 
lion of  them,  about  one  to  each  Hindoo  god. 

These  very  old  religions  may  survive  among  degenerate  peo- 
ple, both  people  and  religions  being  anachronisms,  while  in  some 
cases  both  may  die  out,  as  did  the  Egyptian,  which  kept  the  dead 
as  mummies  with  a  roll  or  book  of  the  dead  to  help  the  deceased 
through  hades.  In  South  America  many  whites  have  sunk  to 
fetichism,  which  is  a  combination  of  ancient  savage  observance 
mixed  with  Christianity,  and  passing  under  the  latter  title. 

The  religion  of  a  race  is  merely  culture  and  instruction, 
whether  low  or  high  grade.  In  Thomas  a  Becket's  day  it  was 
thought  to  be  the  height  of  religious  culture  to  be  very  dirty  and 
to  have  vermin. 

The  origin  of  sects  is  quite  instructive  and  reveals  the  simple 
basis  upon  which  they  rest.  The  theosophists  started  through  a 
joke  played  on  a  superstitious  gentleman  by  some  college  pro- 
fessors. They  led  him  to  think  some  Hindoo  revelations  were 
sent  to  him.  The  methodists  started  in  a  college  nick-name  of  a 
small  society  of  students  at  Oxford  in  1729.  John  Wesley  was 
the  master  spirit  of  the  society.  Mohammed  and  Swedenborg 
were  epileptics,  though  having  considerable  force  of  character, 
but  dominated  by  delusions  and  hallucinations,  as  so  many  other 
religious  innovators  were.  John  of  Leyden,  the  founder  of  ana- 
baptism,  was  insane  homicidally.  John  Calvin  was  bloodthirsty 
and  cruel  in  his  beliefs  and  practice,  though  in  keeping  with  his 
period.  The  puritans  burned  witches  at  the  stake  in  New  Eng- 
land, though  professing  Christ's  teaching  of  love  and  forgive- 
ness. Manzoni^^  tells  of  persons  in  many  epidemics,  1530  to 
1630,  in  Lombardy  being  burned  as  witches  and  blamed  as  spread- 
ers of  the  plague.  Even  "learned  men"  claimed  that  the  comet 
of  1628  caused  the  Milan  Epidemic  of  J630. 

Human  sacrifices  were  very  common  as  an  outgrowth  of  ani- 
mal and  plant  offerings,  from  a  feeling  that  the  gods  should  have 
the  highest  class  of  gift,  and  it  is  surprising  how  universal  this 

^  I  Promessi  Sposi,  p.  483. 


178  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

practice  was.  The  Druids  drenched  England  and  Europe  with 
their  altar  blood.  Burdick  (Foundation  Rites)  describes  the  cus- 
tom of  burying  alive  in  corner-stones.  Asia  and  Africa  in  various 
ways  destroyed  human  beings  to  appease  deities,  while  the  Mexi- 
can and  South  American  Indians  probably  exceeded  all  others  in 
this  infamy.  Other  religions  kept  up  the  sacrifice  but  in  disguised 
ways.  The  horrible  Spanish  and  Portuguese  inquisitions  were 
substitutes,  the  Crusade  and  other  "holy  wars,"  whether  by  Mo- 
hammedans or  Christians,  offered  up  human  life  freely.  Directly 
or  indirectly  these  superstitious  cults  are  deadly.  An  Amish 
preacher  in  Pennsylvania  forbid  the  petting  of  a  child  by  a  father 
as  sinful,  claiming  that  all  love  should  be  reserved  for  God.  The 
family  quarrel  that  followed  resulted  in  the  father  killing  his 
entire  family;  as  degenerates  crowd  such  cults  it  is  remarkable 
that  more  such  things  do  not  happen.  Probably  they  are  not 
heard  from  usually.  The  Quakers  and  Shakers  were  probably 
the  most  harmless  of  all  sects  and  in  spite  of  it  they  appear  to  be 
dying  out.  Eddyism  manages  to  be  murderous  in  withholding 
aid  to  sufferers  who  die  unattended  properly.  The  tendency  of 
this  depravity  is  to  harden  the  heart  and  kill  off  all  sympathy. 
Dowieism  is  a  mere  confidence  game  of  a  collossal  criminal  degen- 
erate who  robs  his  congregation  in  the  most  open  manner  and 
also  permits  the  sick  to  perish  unaided.  He  is  worshipped  as 
Elijah  II,  and  it  is  expected  that  he  will  promote  himself  further 
when  practicable.  A  paranoiac  named  Teed  taught  that  the  earth 
was  hollow  and  we  lived  inside  of  it.  He  built  up  quite  a  harem 
which  he  called  heaven.  He  and  a  man  named  Schweinfurth  in- 
duced many  to  give  up  their  money  and  families  to  them  in  return 
for  the  privilege  of  worshipping  them. 

Predictions  that  the  end  of  the  world  was  coming  have  con- 
stantly been  made,  the  most  notable  being  in  A.  D.  1,000,  but 
even  as  late  as  1840  the  Millerites  in  America  prepared  their  as- 
cension robes  and  sold  off  their  property,  giving  the  money  to 
preachers  of  the  doctrine  to  be  distributed  among  the  poor,  but 
the  preachers  were  thrifty  and  argued  that  the  poor  would  not 
need  it  if  the  world  ended. 

Bitter  quarrels  and  bloodshed  have  occurred  over  such  ques- 
tions as  to  how  many  souls  can  dance  on  the  point  of  a  needle. 


SUPERSTITION.  1 79 

The  iconoclastic  controversy  of  the  eighth  century  began  with  the 
Greek  Emperor  Phillipicus  Bardanus  suppressing  image  and  pic- 
ture worship.  Constantine  the  Roman  pontiff  denounced  him. 
Leo,  another  emperor,  in  726  commanded  all  images  except  that 
of  Christ  on  the  cross  to  be  taken  from  the  church.  The  priests 
and  monks  who  made  money  by  the  sales  of  images  raised  a  re- 
bellion. Charlemagne  assembled  three  hundred  bishops  in  794 
and  they  condemned  image  worship,  but  vested  interests  in  the 
superstition  still  prevail. 

In  1420  the  Hussite  wars  of  Bohemia  were  due  to  the  papal 
refusal  to  agree  to  the  following  articles : 

1.  The  word  of  God  to  be  freely  preached. 

2.  The  sacrament  to  be  administered  in  both  forms. 

3.  The  clergy  to  possess  no  property  or  temporal  power. 

4.  All  sins  to  be  punished  by  the  proper  authorities. 

Huss  denounced  indulgences  and  was  in  turn  excommuni- 
cated, tried  by  a  clerical  mob,  condemned  and  burned  at  the  stake 
in  141 5.  The  chalice  branch  of  the  Hussites  demanded  wine  for 
the  laity  at  the  sacrament.  In  this  Hussite  war  one  hundred 
towns  and  fifteen  villages  were  destroyed.  Finally  the  Hussites 
conquered  and  were  invited  to  a  conference  with  the  papists,  but 
could  not  agree.  In  1648  there  were  but  700,000  left  of  four 
million  in  Bohemia  after  the  war. 

In  ancient  Babylonia,  forty  centuries  B.  C,  the  offices  of  priest 
and  king  were  united  in  the  "patesis."  Sargon,  who  reigned  in 
3800  B.  C,  was  among  these  priest-kings,  and  not  only  did  this 
governing  class  profit  by  the  unintelligence  of  the  masses  but 
oriental  commercial  enterprise  guarded  itself  with  lies,  as  in 
Phoenicia,  to  discourage  competition  and  conceal  the  origin  of 
articles.  The  trees  from  which  they  obtained  the  frankincense  in 
Arabia  were  reported  to  be  guarded  by  winged  serpents  ;^^  the 
lake  where  cassia  was  gathered  was  infested  by  winged  bats,^^  and 
cinnamon  was  in  high,  inaccessible  rocks.  Mercantile  explorers 
concealed  their  geographical  discoveries  as  zealously  as  priests 
who  desire  to  perpetuate  ignorance,  for  more  can  be  made  from 

^"Herodotus  3,  107. 
''I  Kings,  3,  no. 


l8o  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

it,  as  to  this  day  public  schools  are  fought  as  destroyers  of  profits 
to  the  cruel  and  oppressive. 

The  tooth  of  some  gigantic  extinct  animal  is  exhibited  by  Cey- 
lon priests  periodically  as  a  sacred  relic  of  Buddha,  as  the  coat  of 
Christ  is  shown  in  Treves. 

Sir  Edwin  Arnold  remarked  that  ''The  extravagances  which 
disfigure  the  record  and  practices  of  Buddhism  are  to  be  referred 
to  that  inevitable  degradation  which  priesthoods  always  inflict 
upon  great  ideas  committed  to  their  charge." 

The  sacred  city  of  Lhasa  in  Thibet  is  forbidden  to  foreigners 
by  the  Buddhists  and  indeed  the  entire  country  is  hostile  to  them. 
In  this  city  is  the  great  temple  of  Potala  of  the  Dalai,  or  Grand 
Lama,  who  is  regarded  as  the  reincarnation  of  Buddha  the  god. 
He  is  really  a  boy,  and  always  dies  young  under  the  guardianship 
of  the  dreaded  Gyalpo,  the  temporal  ruler  of  Lhasa.  The  palace 
is  built  on  a  great  rock,  and  the  poor  Grand  Lama  is  concealed  at 
the  top  of  the  ninth  story,  which  is  the  summit,  and  never  allowed 
out.  This  sort  of  figure-head  worship  is  worth  study  as  founded 
upon  a  very  widely  distributed  human  disposition  to  reverence 
the  mysterious,  the  unknown,  the  talked  about  but  unseen.  When 
people  are  monkeys  enough  to  let  a  set  of  sharpers  hide  their 
ruler  and  really  reign  in  his  stead  they  will  gulp  all  sorts  of  yarns 
about  his  wonderful  powers,  nor  do  the  priesthood  care  to  have 
more  than  indirect  power,  for  as  the  mouthpiece  of  the  god  they 
can  exert  more  power  than  were  they  to  claim  to  be  divine  direct. 
The  Japanese  mikado  was  thus  held  as  too  holy  to  be  seen,  and 
a  rascally  subordinate  fooled  the  people  and  ruled  instead  till  the 
overthrow  of  the  usurper,  and  in  the  Philippines  the  insurgent 
generals  tried  this  trick  by  killing  each  other  ofif  and  giving  out 
that  the  dead  chief  was  too  exalted  to  be  seen,  but  that  his  orders 
were  being  carried  out.  While  mankind  is  content  to  let  a  special 
class  of  confidence  men  set  themselves  up  as  interpreters  of  a  hid- 
den ruler,  either  in  the  top  of  a  building  or  in  the  sky,  mankind 
will  receive  precisely  the  consequences  of  such  simplicity. 

As  an  evidence  of  the  kind  of  morality  that  may  become  at- 
tached to  a  religion,  in  Thibet  no  man  may  have  more  than  one 
wife,  but  women  may  have  as  many  husbands  as  they  want  at 
one  time.    The  Buddhists  pray  by  machinery,  a  wheel  turned  by 


SUPERSTITION.  l8l 

hand  or  water  power.  The  priests  invent  hideous  dances  and 
disguises  such  as  skeleton  pictures  on  their  clothing  to  frighten 
the  childish  common  people.  Primitive  Buddhism  is  antagonized 
by  the  Lama  worship,  just  as  primitive  Christianity  is  ignored  by 
the  Romish  and  Russian  churches.  Like  the  pope  of  Rome  and 
his  progenitor,  the  old  Roman  emperor,  so  in  Thibet  the  Grand 
Lama  was,  through  his  visible  representatives,  the  priests,  sup- 
posed to  have  power  and  learning  as  wide  as  the  ocean,  and  he  is 
sometimes  called  the  **Ocean  Lama." 

Zoroaster  was  said  to  have  been  a  king  of  Media  who  con- 
quered Babylon  about  B.  C.  2458.  Another  account  makes  him 
the  herald  of  a  new  religion  which  regards  the  universe  as  con- 
tended for  by  two  principles,  one  of  good  and  one  of  evil,  but  of 
course  in  time  corruptions  of  this  belief  crept  in.  Wherever 
Apollo  worship  was  fixed  there  were  prophets  and  sybyls.  The 
priests  studied  geography  and  physical  sciences  to  enable  them 
to  appear  to  know  other  things  that  they  did  not,  and  to  impose 
upon  credulity.  The  Delphian  oracle  nonsense  was  as  transparent 
a  robbery  of  superstitious  people  as  that  of  Dowieism.  The  town 
of  Krissa,  in  Phocis,  near  Delphi,  became  great  and  powerful. 
The  Krissaeans  derived  great  profit  from  the  numbers  of  visitors. 
The  sanctuary  of  Pytho  with  its  administrators  expanded  into  the 
town  of  Delphi.  The  Krissaeans  abused  their  position  as  masters 
of  the  avenue  to  the  temple  by  sea,  and  levied  exorbitant  tolls  on 
the  visitors  who  landed  there.  They  outraged  women  returning 
from  the  temple.  About  595  B.  C.  a  war  was  thus  caused  lasting 
ten  years,  called  the  first  sacred  war  in  Greece.  Krissa  was  de- 
stroyed and  the  Delphians'  right  to  rob  the  visitors  without  com- 
petition triumphed. 

The  Egyptian  priesthood  was  a  sacerdotal  nobility  that  was 
exempt  from  taxes,  military  service  and  forced  labor.  Priestly 
inscriotions  declare  imprecations  threatening  with  terrible  ills  in 
this  world  and  the  next  those  who  stole  the  smallest  part  of  the 
gifts  to  the  gods.  The  priestly  possessions  gradually  increased 
until  even  in  the  most  distressed  times  at  least  one-third  of  all 
lands  and  other  property  belonged  to  the  gods,  but  kings  were 
iorced  to  wrench  power  and  lands  from  them.^^  The  kings  were 
^'  Maspero.  Dawn  of  Civilization,  p.  303. 


l82  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

quite  as  oppressive,  particularly  when  they  would  commandeer 
the  entire  nation  to  carve  out  and  pull  huge  blocks  of  stone  up 
artificial  hills  to  build  pyramid  tombs  for  themselves  in  which 
their  carcasses  were  to  be  saved  for  the  next  world.  Then  in 
the  building  of  such  vast  temples  as  the  one  at  Karnak  the  priests 
would  have  their  innings  with  the  poor  creatures,  hundreds  of 
thousands  of.  whom  worked  and  starved  to  death  to  enable  the 
ruling  ecclesiasts  to  have  fine  buildings  to  live  and  serve  in,  to  fur- 
ther deceive  and  rob  generations  unborn.  In  the  famous  papyrus 
at  Turin  there  are  caricatures  of  the  licentious  practices  of  the 
priests,  depicting  a  series  of  adventures  of  an  old  and  amorous 
priest  with  one  of  the  singers  of  the  temples  of  Ammon. 

The  Koran  is  an  irregular  collection  of  scraps  written  on 
palm  leaves  and  mutton  bones.  The  original  "inspirations"  being 
discordant  they  were  "expurgated  and  revised"  by  the  thir^  caliph, 
Othman.  The  epileptic  Mohammed  would  have  a  revelation  re- 
quiring him  to  take  another  wife  or  to  write  some  instructions  for 
his  people  to  follow  and  would  use  any  writing  material  handy, 
such  as  the  shoulder  bones  of  ^heep,  palm  leaves,  etc. ;  Abu-Bekr 
picked  these  over  and  put  the  long  ones  first  and  the  short  ones 
last,  the  only  arrangement  of  these  revelations  except  that  of  the 
third  caliph's  additions  and  omissions.  These  baskets  of  frag- 
ments are  worshipped. 

The  moslems  assemble  and  select  an  imam,  who  leads  the 
capers.  He  rises  and  the  moslems  rise,  he  prostrates  himself 
and  they  imitate  him.  While  the  "revelations"  of  the  Turks  and 
Mormons  were  mere  tricks  to  enable  the  practice  of  polygamy, 
at  least  this  is  an  open  practice,  other  privileged  livers  in  temples 
secured  harems  by  imposing  upon  the  rabble  such  claims  as 
making  "brides  of  heaven."  This  appears  to  have  been  a  common 
trick  in  ancient  Egyptian,  Grecian  and  Roman  days  and  it  is  rea- 
sonable to  expect  considerable  survival  of  such  customs.  In  many 
places  in  South  America  and  Mexico  open  debauchery  qf  the 
priesthood  is  common  and  not  even  apologized  for.  Sam  T.  Jack, 
a  showman,  said  that  a  Mexican  priest  offered  him  girls  for  his 
ballet,  and  commanded  them  to  strip  so  he  could  judge  of  their 
figures.     This  was  in  1895. 

Some  sects  have  made  use  of  interpretations  of  texts  as  justi- 


SUPERSTITION.  183 

fication  for  any  sort  of  excess  or  wrong  they  desire  to  commit, 
especially  "the  sanctified"  who  say  they  cannot  sin.  "All  things 
are  lawful  for  me"^^  is  one  of  these  texts. 

The  religion  of  the  Druids  among  the  Celts  of  Gaul  and  Brit- 
ain was  cruel  and  included  human  sacrifice.  Dru  means  oak 
grove  in  Gaulish.  The  oak  and  mistletoe  were  sacred  growths 
among  them.  The  priests  pretended  to  be  enchanters  and  each 
priest  wore  about  his  neck  what  the  ignorant  were  told  were  ser- 
pents' eggs  in  a  golden  case.  The  religion  was  a  mixture  of  the 
worship  of  serpents,  sun,  moon  and  gods  and  goddesses. 

Coifi,  a  chief  priest  of  the  Britains,  denounced  his  gods  as  im- 
posters  because  they  had  not  made  his  fortune  and  he  became  a 
Christian.  This  was  a  rough  way  of  announcing  that  a  "higher" 
call"  had  been  received  similar  to  an  increase  in  salary  ofifered  by 
another  congregation. 

The  priests  in  the  early  English  days  following  Alfred,  espe- 
cially in  Edwy's  time,  resorted  to  mechanical  tricks  to  deceive  the 
peasants  and  keep  knowledge  from  the  common  people,  as  did 
the  Egyptians,  Romans  and  Greeks.  Belief  in  sorcery  was  also 
common.  It  is  told  of  William  the  Conqueror  that  he  placed  a 
sorceress  in  a  wooden  tower  and  had  her  pushed  before  his  troops, 
but  Hereward  burned  tower,  sorceress  and  all. 

The  pontifices  (bridge  priests)  of  ancient  Rome  had  flamines 
or  sacrificial  priests  to  blow  the  fire.  The  flamen  was  not  allowed 
tp  take  an  oath,  mount  a  horse  or  look  at  an  enemy.  He  could 
not  stay  a  night  away  from  his  house  and  his  hand  touched  nothing 
unclean  and  never  approached  a  corpse,  somewhat  as  the  Hebrew 
Kohen  was  exempt  in  some  respects.  This  fire-blowing  priest 
who  had  to  be  clean  doubtless  originated  from  priestly  cooks  who 
finally  grew  so  important  that  a  lictor  preceded  him  to  stop  work 
of  people,  as  he  was  not  to  see  the  business  of  daily  life.^*  So 
powerful  an  order  as  a  pagan  priesthood,  it  appears,  was  as  de- 
pendent upon  culinary  caprice  as  any  suburban  resident. 

In  the  days  of  Henry  VIII  teeth  and  toenail  relics  were  abund- 
antly on  exhibition  by  indolent,  sensual  monks.  They  had  the 
coals  that  fried  St.  Lawrence  and  they  moved  images  by  wires. 

^  I  Cor.  VI.,  12-15. 

^*Gaul  and  Kromei,  Life  of  Greeks  and  Romans,  p.  103. 


184  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

But  when  the  people  turned  against  these  harpies  of  course  many 
good  monks  had  to  suffer  with  the  bad.  In  1366  "Chaucer  sings 
of  the  hunting  monk  and  the  courtly  prioress  with  amor  omnia 
vincit  on  her  brooch,  while  others  tell  of  the  unrebuked  vices  of 
the  time  when  the  king  paraded  his  mistress  through  London  as 
queen  of  beauty  and  nobles  blazoned  their  infamy  in  court  and 
tournament."^^ 

Just  before  Wyclif  the  pope  and  king  combined  for  the  en- 
slaving of  the  church,  bishoprics,  abbacies  and  livings  in  the  gift 
of  the  churchmen,  so  that  the  treasuries  of  both  king  and  pope 
profited  by  the  arrangement.^^  This  was  in  1361.  In  1377 
Wyclif 's  theory,  seeking  to  make  a  direct  relation  between  man. 
and  god,  swept  away  the  whole  basis  of  a  middle  class  priesthood 
on  which  the  mediaeval  church  was  built.  The  priests  resented 
a  suggestion  that  they  should  return  to  original  poverty.^^ 

Rufus  of  England  made  "Firebrand,"  Flambard,  a  dissolute 
and  vicious  rascal,  bishop  of  Durham.  Dunstan  previously,  after 
an  infamous  career  of  humbuggery,  rapacity  and  cruelty,  was 
canonized.  The  churches  were  often  the  sanctuaries  of  all*  sorts 
of  refugees,  sometimes  unexpectedly  violated,  as  by  the  knights 
who  murdered  Thomas  a  Becket,  and  the  black  band  of  Henry 
III  in  their  capture  of  Hubert  de  Burgh. 

A  mediaeval  ecclesiastical  prerogative  was  what  was  called 
benefit  of  clergy  which  conferred  on  its  members  immunity  from 
the  operation  of  secular  law.  This  has  often  been  confounded 
with  services  of  clergy,  which  is  an  entirely  different  thing.  Ben- 
efit of  clergy  means  that  the  priest  might  murder,  steal,  rape,  lie, 
without  punishment.  Such  things  as  the  interdict  and  excom- 
munication derived  power  wholly  from  ignorance  and  supersti- 
tion of  the  populace.  A  cursed  person  dropping  dead  in  church 
from  fright  was  an  occasional  proof  of  divine  power  of  the  curser, 
about  as  frequently  it  has  happened  when  a  person  was  blessed 
at  a  church  sacrament,  but  of  course  this  was  a  mere  accident. 
England  was  made  to  suffer  from  both  excommunication  and  in- 
terdict when  the  country  was  altogether  damned  for  not  yielding 

^  Green,  History  of  England,  p.  298. 
"^  Green,  ibid. 
^^  Green,  ibid. 


SUPERSTITION.  185 

revenues  to  the  curser,  but  it  escaped  the  inquisition,  which  lasted 
from  1203  to  1225,  in  which  period  Torquemada  alone  sacrificed 
11,000  victims.  The  total  in  43  years,  from  1481  to  1525, 
amounted  to  234,520.^^ 

Selfish  grabbing  of  opportunity  afforded  by  spread  of  sec- 
tarian ideas  is  by  no  means  confined  to  any  particular  religion. 
Francis  of  Waldeck  in  1544  wanted  to  make  the  new  religion  of 
Lutheranism  a  family  possession  with  himself  as  bishop,  but  mob 
frenzy  moved  too  fast  for  him.  In  Munster  churches  and 
libraries  were  destroyed,  foolish  revelations  were  made,  prophets 
appeared  with  long,  ragged  beards.  John  Bockelson  married  six- 
teen wives  and  proclaimed  polygamy. 

Tyler  summarizes  nature  myths  in  his  chapter  on  the  early 
history  of  mankind^®  to  the  effect  that  everything  in  nature  is  per- 
sonified, fire  is  a  hungry  beast  licking  its  red  tongue  over  its 
food,  the  sun  and  moon  are  personified  and  the  moon's  children 
are  the  stars;  animals  are  persons;  much  superstition  is  from 
the  childish  effort  to  explain  nature,  stories  grow  and  change. 
Cox  names  as  aids  to  change  polynomy  the  use  of  many  names 
for  the  same  hero,  equivocations,  also,  where  words  with  the 
same  sounds  become  confused  and  different  meanings  are  at- 
tached to  old  ideas,  for  instance  the  rays  from  the  sun  were  spoken 
of  as  fingers  in  a  poetical  way  in  one  language,  to  be  taken  literally 
in  another  language  as  meaning  that  the  sun  had  real  hands  and 
fingers.  Then  localizing  tendencies  fitted  old  stories  to  new 
places,  etc. 

Miiller  mentions  poetical  metaphors  such  as  moonlight  clasp- 
ing the  earth  and  sunbeams  kissing  the  seas  as  common  in  the 
early  history  of  languages.  In  reference  to  the  golden  rays  of 
the  sun  playing  with  the  foliage  of  the  trees  the  Veda  mentions 
Savitur,  one  of  the  names  of  the  sun,  as  golden  handed,  and  the 
mistake  arises  that  the  sun  is  full  of  gold  for  its  worshippers,  and 
bestows  it  on  his  priests  and  thus  superstitions  take  root  from 
childish  ideas.  Change  in  the  mythology  in  the  original  Sanskrit 
occurs  as  to  Savila  cutting  his  hand  and  the  priests  replaced  it 
with  an  artificial  one  of  gold.     Later  Savitar  is  said  to  become 

^^J.  A.  Symonds,  Renaissance  in  Italy. 
^^  Primitive  Culture. 


l86  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

himself  a  priest  and  he  cut  off  his  own  hand  and  the  other  priests 
made  a  golden  one  for  him.**^ 

The  German  god  Tyr  is  identified  by  Grimm  with  the  Sanskrit 
sun  god,^^  and  he  is  one-handed  because  the  name  of  golden- 
handed  sun  led  to  the  conception  of  the  sun  with  one  artificial 
hand  and  later  to  the  idea  of  sun  with  one  hand.  Each  nation 
invented  its  story  as  to  how  Savitar  or  Tyr  lost  his  hand,  and 
while  the  priests  of  India  said  he  lost  it  at  a  sacrifice,  the  sports- 
men of  the  north  said  he  placed  it  in  the  mouth  of  a  wolf  and  it 
was  bitten  off.     Radical  and  poetical  metaphors  get  mixed. 

If  modern  poets  call  clouds  mountains  it  is  clearly  poetical 
metaphor,  but  we  see  the  Veda  called  the  clouds  parvata,  knotty 
or  rugged,  and  the  result  is  mythology,  for  if  in  the  Veda  it  is  said 
the  maruts  or  storms  make  the  mountains  tremble  or  that  the 
storms  pass  through  the  mountains,  this,  though  originally  mean- 
ing that  the  storms  make  the  clouds  shake,  comes  to  mean  later 
that  the  maruts  actually  shook  the  mountains  and  rent  them  asun- 
der.*2 

Muller  further  says^  "I  look  upon  the  sunrise  and  sunset,  on 
the  daily  return  of  night  and  day,  on  the  battle  between  light  and 
darkness,  on  the  whole  solar  drama  in  all  its  details  that  is  acted 
every  day,  every  month  and  year  in  heaven  and  in  earth  as  the 
principal  objects  in  early  mythology.  I  consider  that  the  very  idea 
of  divine  power  sprang  from  the  wonderment  with  which  the 
forefathers  of  the  Aryan  family  stared  at  the  bright,  deva,  powers 
that  came  and  went  no  one  knew  whence  or  whither,  that  never 
failed,  never  faded,  never  died,  and  were  called  immortal,  i.  e., 
unfading  as  compared  with  the  feeble  and  decaying  race  of  man. 
I  consider  the  regular  recurrence  of  phenomena  an  almost  indis- 
pensable condition  of  their  being  raised  through  the  charms  of 
mythological  phraseology  to  the  ranks  of  immortals,  and  I  give  a 
proportionately  small  space  to  meteorological  phenomena  such  as 
cloud,  thunder  and  lightning,  which,  though  causing  commotion 
for  the  time  in  the  hearts  of  men,  would  be  classed  as  subjects  or 
enemies.     It  is  the  sky  that  gathers  the  clouds,  and  the  bright 

*°  Miiller  Science  of  Languages,  V.  II.,  p.  397. 
*"  Deutsche  Mythologie,  XLVIL,  p.  187. 
"Muller,  Sci.  L.,  Vol.  II.,  p.  396. 


SUPERSTITION.  187 

sun  is  but  an  irregular  repetition  of  that  more  momentous  strug- 
gle which  takes  place  every  day  between  the  darkness  of  the  night 
and  the  refreshing  light  of  morning."^^ 

Mohammedans  do  not  fear  death  in  battle,  for  they  believe 
their  reward  is  sure  in  the  next  world,  but  if  their  Sodies  are  cut 
to  pieces  or  burned  they  can  never  get  to  heaven,  so  some  of  their 
enemies  terrify  them  by  cremating  dead  Mohammedans.  In  Bos- 
nia at  one  time  they  fled  from  the  country  on  this  account. 
Ancient  Assyrians  took  advantage  of  the  Egyptians'  reverence  for 
cats  by  tying  them  to  the  shields  of  soldiers  before  whom  the 
Egyptians  stampeded,  as  they  could  not  risk  killing  a  cat.  The 
Sepoys  of  India  cared  little  for  any  punishment  the  English  could 
inflict,  and  were  in  constant  danger  of  another  uprising  until 
some  captives  were  blown  from  the  mouths  of  cannons,  a  mode 
of  destruction  that  was  found  to  completely  suppress  further  re- 
volt, owing  to  the  Sepoys  having  some  superstition  attached  to 
separation  of  parts  of  the  body. 

Survival  of  time-honored  foolishness  is  beyond  number. 
People  may  be  seen  slyly  gathering  the  bubbles  on  their  coffee, 
picking  up  horseshoes  for  luck,  trying  to  see  the  new  moon  over 
right  shoulders,  hesitating  about  walking  under  ladders  or  cross- 
ing a  funeral  procession.  Among  gamblers  there  is  a  regular 
code  of  such  observances  and  an  allied  mysticism  is  found  to  an 
extreme  degree  in  various  forms  among  degenerates  of  the  "cere- 
bral neurasthenia"  class  who  fear  to  do  this  or  that  thing,  to  go 
here  or  there;  some  fear  crowds,  others  open  spaces,  some  fear 
contamination  and- others  have  morbid  impulses  to  count  every- 
thing they  encounter  or  to  make  ejaculations  sometimes  of  a  filthy 
nature. 

Most  superstition  is  ingrained  from  childhood,  such  as  in  a 
baby  girl  who  was  always  afraid  of  a  chicken  feather,  its  trem- 
bling movements  caused  it  to  appear  to  be  alive,  and  a  primitive 
savage  could  have  readily  made  the  same  mistake. 

Lowry,  in  Griffin's  Collegians,  turned  back  on  meeting  a  red 
headed  woman  and  lost  his  place  because  he  did  not  perform  his 
errand,  delivering  mail,  but  Lowry  claimed  it  was  the  red  head 
that  brought  him  the  bad  luck  of  losing  his  j'ob. 
*'  Miiller.  Sci.  L,  Vol.  II.,  p.  537. 


l88  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Much  charity  can  be  traced  to  a  superstitious  regard  for  a 
reward  hereafter.  A  soldier  at  Santiago  was  assisting  refugees 
and  Col.  Roosevelt  warned  him  not  to  expose  himself  to  so  much 
danger,  whereupon  the  soldier  remarked  with  much  surprise : 
^'A  man  can't  get  hurt  while  doing  a  good  deed,  can  he?" 

The  auspiciousness  of  things  we  find  still  referred  to,  origi- 
nating in  the  ancient  custom  of  the  priests  observing  the  flight 
of  birds  or  the  intestines  of  animals  to  determine  whether  the 
gods  favored  certain  undertakings.  The  Emperor  Hadrian  was 
especially  addicted  to  "auspices."  The  vulgar  expression  is  trying 
to  note  "which  way  the  cat  jumps,"  and  children,  savages,  gam- 
blers and  degenerates  attach  importance  to  trifling  methods  of 
solving  uncertainties,  as  the  Chinese  religion  brings  down  from 
far  off  times  similar  ideas,  and  the  Chinaman  juggles  with  his 
""joss  sticks"  for  answers  as  to  whether  he  shall  make  a  certain 
venture  or  not. 

Benvenuto  Cellini  gravely  records  that  January  5,  1537,  just 
after  sundown  near  Rome,  he  saw  in  the  direction  of  Florence, 
toward  the  northwest,  on  the  approach  of  a  dark  night,  a  beam  of 
light  which  sparkled.  He  thought  it  indicated  something  and  it 
turned  out  that  a  noted  man  had  died  that  day.  The  aurora  bore- 
alis  is  not  common  in  such  latitudes,  but  this  extract  from  the 
famous  sculptor's  memoirs  is  characteristic  of  the  universal  mis- 
interpretation of  the  simplest  natural  events. 

Lucretius'  affirmation  that  "Nature  is  seen  to  do  all  things 
spontaneously  of  herself  without  the  meddling  of  the  gods"  is  op- 
posed to-day  by  those  who  have  substituted  other  gods  for  the 
ancient.  Superstitions  are  often  imperfect  observations,  as  when 
farmers  and  sailors  predict  weather  upon  insufficient  signs,  such 
as  the  ground-hog  appearance,  etc.  Astrology  swayed  the  desti- 
nies of  Europe,  and  a  hundred  years  after  Luther,  the  astrologer 
was  the  counsellor  of  princes  and  generals.  Now  the  very  rudi- 
ments of  astrology  are  lost  and  forgotten  except  among  fortune 
tellers  and  other  fakirs.  The  average  psychical  research  society  is 
composed  of  persons  with  little  logical  training  and  unfamiliar 
with  physics,  chemistry  and  biology,  but  occasionally  one  who 
may  be  versed  in  one  of  these  subjects  exhibits  all  the  cred- 
ulity and  bias  of  the  others.     The  average  fraud  who  is  being 


SUPERSTITION.  189 

examined  by  such  societies  presents  his  fake  in  such  ways  as  could 
be  compared  with  requiring  the  watch  repairer  to  study  the  de- 
ranged mechanism  of  a  watch  by  examining  the  works  through 
a  key  hole,,  the  cabinets  and  darkened  room  and  other  bambooz- 
ling tricks  are  gravely  investigated  and  finally  some  medium 
makes  the  revelation  that  there  is  nothing  mysterious  about  it  all 
except  in  the  minds  of  the  victims.  Mrs.  Piper  of  Boston,  in 
October,  1901,  announced  that  her  mysterious  trance  states  in 
which  so  many  "distinguished  persons"  found  evidences  of  super- 
naturalism,  etc.,  are  nothing  extraordinary,  and  that  she  does  not 
claim  to  hold  communication  with  the  so-called  spirit  world.  She 
explains  that  her  revelations  were  nothing  more  than  what  could 
have  naturally  occurred  to  her  mind  or  been  suggested  by  some 
one  present.  In  her  simplicity  she  talks  about  mind  reading,  or 
telepathy,  and  likens  it  to  the  X-ray  and  wireless  telegraphy,  much 
as  the  Indian  shows  you  your  soul  in  the  looking  glass,  and  claims 
that  all  things  are  possible  when  water  boils  without  heat,  as 
shown  by  the  Seidlitz  powder.  As  Huxley  says,  "Jack  and  the 
Bean  Stalk"  can  be  proven  true  by  such  reasoning  as  these  "in- 
vestigators" use.  Keeley's  motor,  the  great  humbug,  was  firmly 
believed  in  by  stockholders  in  it,  and  by  occasional  scientists. 
Ghosts,  spirits,  fairies,  pixies,  the  "little  people"  and  the  "good 
people"  of  Ireland  and  many  other  countries  are  survivals  from 
hoary  old  times  with  a  basis  of  forest-dwelling  monkeys  and 
dwarfs  or  pigmies  mingled  with  hallucinations,  delusions  and  de- 
ception. Crystal  gazing,  palmistry,  astrology,  hypnotism,  animal 
magnetism,  and  other  occultism  is  "proved"  by  calling  attention 
to  the  fact  that  competent  surgeons  doubted  the  possibility  of  the 
X-ray  when  it  was  first  announced.  Such  an  argument  would 
bolster  up  the  wildest  drivel  of  pre-Aryan  ape  imaginations  as 
true.  There  are  competent  persons  to-day  who  do  not  believe  the 
moon  is  made  of  green  cheese,  therefore  this  occult  fact  will  be- 
come established  according  to  occult  reasoning  because  it  was 
not  believed  in.  This  alleged  ability  to  read  minds  at  a  distance, 
telepathy,  Preyer  regards  as  involving  fraud,  coincidence,  hallu- 
cinations, incorrect  reporting,  lack  of  accurate  observation  and 
similar  means  of  imposing  upon  self  or  others.    As  to  the  crystal 


190  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

gazing  of  Lang,  many  lunatics  in  asylums  *'see  things"  without 
the  aid  of  a  crystal. 

Many  peculiar  events  can  be  accounted  for  naturally,  for  ex- 
ample a  lady  lost  a  promissory  note  for  which  she  hunted  in  vain 
until  finally  its  location  came  to  her  in  a  dream;  this  is  nothing 
more  than  a  revived  memory  equivalent  to  things  occurring  to 
the  mind  when  ceased  to  be  sought  for.  A  drunkard  hid  his 
money  and  while  sober  could  not  find  it  but  readily  went  to  the 
hiding  place  when  drunk  again. 

A  lady  was  being  confirmed  in  a  church  when  an  earthquake 
occurred;  she  told  a  physician  who  was  also  in  church  that  she 
thought  the  noise  was  the  coming  of  the  holy  ghost,  the  doctor 
remarked  that  he  thought  it  was  the  coming  of  the  steeple;  in- 
stances of  the  receptivity  of  ideas  from  untrained'  and  trained 
directions.  Many  are  the  paranoiacs  and  dements  in  asylums 
who  not  only  claim  to  be  gods  but  impose  their  belief  upon  the 
patients. 

A  poem  addressed  to  a  scientist  by  a  literary  gentleman  de- 
plored the  inability  of  the  delver  in  nature  to  see  God  in  all  such 
matters.  Pope's  lines,  'Xo,  the  poor  Indian,"  etc.,  were  appended 
to  the  verses  by  the  naturalist,  by  way  of  reply. 

The  English  high  church  covets  the  millinery,  perfumery  and 
gymnastics  of  its  older  relation.  At  Dover  in  1901,  Easter,  a 
curate  refused  to  confirm  boys  who  refused  to  confess,  and  this 
suggests  that  ceremonies  enable  a  hold  on  the  imagination  and 
purses  of  the  people.  By  increase  of  concessions  such  as  sacra- 
ments, abstinences,  feast  and  fast  days,  oversight,  control  and  rev- 
erence are  increased  together,  whereby  the  pennies  of  the  multi- 
tude go  to  make  the  wealth  of  a  few. 

The  ancient  patesis  or  king-priest  has  an  imitator  in  Kaiser 
Wilhelm  II,  who  sermonizes  and  poses  in  other  ways.  Illinois 
had  a  demagogue  spoils  system  governor  who  often  occupied 
pulpits  on  Sundays  while  filling  responsible  public  charity  posi- 
tions with  incompetent  officials  whose  ignorance  was  murderous. 

Wilhelm  addressed  the  nobles  of  East  Prussia  September  6, 
1894,  claiming  ''divine  right"  to  kingship,  and  at  Hamburg  in 
1899  and  elsewhere  he  repeated  this  claim.  Prince  Henry  in  1897 
gave  vent  to  this  outburst  when  addressing  his  royal  brother: 


SUPERSTITION.  -  I91 

*'\  am  only  animated  by  one  desire,  to  proclaim  and  preach  abroad 
to  all  who  will  hear,  as  well  as  those  who  will  not,  the  gospel  of 
your  Majesty's  anointed  person.  *  *  *  q^j.  niost  serene, 
mighty,  beloved  Emperor,  King  and  master,  forever  and  ever. 
Hurrah,  Hurrah,  Hurrah.  Huxley  thinks  that  eventually  royalty 
will  be  laughed  out  of  existence.  Seemingly  the  time  has  not  yet 
come. 

Eddyism  advocates  that  its  prayers  have  a  "knack"  and  the 
correct  combination  with  the  door  to  the  deity  is  in  exclusive 
possession  of  the  Eddyites,  that  he  will  only  listen  to  and  grant 
the  prayers  coming  from  that  official  source,  when  paid  for  at  reg- 
ular rates ;  your  individual  prayers  cannot  avail,  you  must  belong 
to  the  **Union,"  and  "rat"  praying  is  discouraged  by  the  trust. 
The  official  prayer  alone  is  effective.  Similarly  a  Missouri  con- 
fessed fakir  named  Weltman  advertised  to  cure  every  one  at  a 
dollar  a  prayer,  and  so  did  a  miscreant  who  called  himself  "Dr. 
Truth"  in  Boston.  The  postoffices  authorities  seized  their  mail 
for  carrying  on  confidence  games  with  the  public  and  the  amounts 
of  money  sent  these  transparent  humbugs  was  incredible. 

Mental  impressions  do  benefit  some  sick  people,  but  because 
we  may  find  an  occasional  apple  in  the  gutter  that  is  not  the 
proper  place  to  seek  for  apples,  however  much  the  public  may 
appear  to  think  so.  I  have  known  extreme  unction  to  greatly  help, 
and,  on  rare  occasions  to  restore  apparently  dying  persons,  at 
least  their  worry  both  as  to  bodily  and  spiritual  matters  was  al- 
layed by  this  last  sacrament,  and  as  surely  as  worry  may  kill,  so 
their  release  from  it  helped  to  their  recovery. 

Among  the  countless  new  sects  that  arise  are  such  sinless  affairs 
as  the  new  "holiness."  A  Methodist  solicitor  of  building  funds 
established  a  church  of  this  nature,  and  the  sanctified  are  notori- 
ously the  most  arrogant  and  cruel  hypocrites.  Their  sins  are  not 
sins.     Royalty  similarly  cannot  sin,  and  priests  also  are  sinless. 

An  abominable  old  superstition  may  outlive  its  profitableness 
to  its  cultivators,  but  the  people  may  go  on  perpetuating  it  though 
its  occasion  has  passed  away,  just  as  we  have  remnants  of  druidi- 
cal  festivals  and  customs  retained  among  us  and  ancient  Babv- 
lonian  and  Jewish  ceremonies  and  priestly  apparel,  with  also  some 
of  the  Mithras  of  the  Persians  and  Apollo  sun  worship,  remain 


92 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


with  us.  The  very  name  Sunday  for  the  holy  day  is  an  instance. 
Nations  ding  to  old  customs  even  when  their  religion  is  changed, 
but  it  is  only  when  a  band  of  persons  intelligent  and  powerful 
enough  see  profit  in  some  radical  change  that  it  can  be  accom- 
plished b}'  leading  or  forcing  the  people  to  make  the  change,  easier 
still  if  the  times  are  ripe  for  it.  The  absence  of  biological  educa- 
tion among  people  leaves  them  a  prey  to  humbuggery.  Science 
would  negative  all  untruth  and  rescue  the  masses  from  the  horri- 
ble ignorance  that  blinds  them.  It  was  a  difficult  task  as  an  ex- 
ample of  this  condition,  to  educate  a  patient  out  of  the  notion  that 
a  mind  reader  was  injuring  her  by  keeping  his  mind  intent  upon 
her  when  miles  away.  By  instructing  her  that  the  claim  was  fool- 
ish and  that  it  was  her  own  ignorance  that  distressed  her  she 
finally  recovered  and  defied  the  mind  reader,  who  was  trying  to 
defraud  her  of  some  property. 

The  ancient  Phallic  worship,  from  which  it  is  said  obelisks 
and  steeples  date,  was  in  many  respects  an  idealization  of  the 
origin  of  life,  worship  of  the  pater  omnium  vivum.  It  remains 
for  our  modern  days  to  unearth  some  new  abominations  as  dis- 
closed in  the  trial  of  Diss  De  Bar  in  London,  October,  1901, 
charged  with  defrauding  by  fortune  telling.  She  established  a 
sect  called  theocratic  unity,  claimed  the  attributes  of  divine  power, 
and  induced  girls  to  misconduct  themselves  under  the  belief  that 
it  was  a  necessary  part  of  their  religious  devotion,  under  vows 
of  secrecy  and  belief  in  Diss  De  Bar  as  a  deity.  She  and  another 
criminal  had  previously  engaged  in  many  varieties  of  confidence 
games  in  America.  "Sex  Worship,"  by  Clifford  Howard,  is  an 
exposition  of  the  Phallic  origin  of  religion,  published  in  1897.  In 
it  he  claims  that  aphrodisian  cults  were  probably  both  innocent 
and  beneficial  at  the  times  and  places  of  their  origin. 

Very  much  as  dialects  may  become  languages,  or  tribes  swell 
into  nations,  so  any  silly  superstitious  fake  is  liable  to  unexpect- 
edly grow  into  a  full  religion  like  that  of  Shakerism,  or  Eddyism, 
or  Dowieism,  while  others,  like  Teedism  and  Swedenborgianism, 
die  sooner  or  later,  as,  in  fact,  many  now  successful  religions  of 
today  also  will,  save  those  which  through  natural  selection  have 
come  to  stay,  as  the  sturgeon  represents  a  very  early  form  of  fish 
whose  descendants  may  see  the  end  of  this  planet,  and  as  Macaulay 


SUPERSTITION.  I93 

predicted,  would  be  the  case  with  the  Roman  Catholic  religion, 
-when  the  New  Zealand  traveler  visits  the  ruins  of  London  in  far 

off  ages. 

Very  much  of  the  primitive  construction  of  mythology  can  be 
seen  in  the  action  of  children  who  start  out  with  the  idea  of  there 
being  a  Santa  Claus  or  St.  Nicholas.  They  dictate  long  lists  of 
articles  they  want  him  to  bring  them,  showing  the  insatiable  greed 
of  the  little  folks  like  that  of  their  savage  progenitors.  They  are 
anxious  to  propitiate  him  by  promising  to 'be  good  and  tidy  and 
to  learn  lessons,  etc.,  but  they  act  as  though  he  could  be  fooled 
just  as  their  parents  may  sometimes  think  they  can  juggle  with 
the  almighty.  The  little  folks  grow  quite  imaginative  and  give 
accurate  descriptions  of  all  sorts  of  things  done  by  Santa  Claus 
and  are  capable  of  narrating  interviews  with  him.  When  chil- 
dren are  finally  told  that  it  is  a  deception  they  sorrow  over  it  as 
though  a  dear  friend  had  been  lost,  as  one  whose  religion  has  been 
assailed  or  destroyed.  This  reverence  of  a  gift-giving  saint  is  an 
advance  upon  the  fear  of  a  hateful,  revengeful  spirit  and  is  later 
a  step  in  superstition.  But  even  in  civilized  communities  we  find 
a  great  mixture  of  god  and  devil  worship  in  the  fear  of  a  revenge- 
ful and  loving  deity. 

That  superstition,  belief,  religion,  or  philosophy,  call  it  what 
you  will,  that  accords  with  the  inclinations  and  comprehension 
of  a  people,  or  can  be  impressed  upon  them,  is  the  one  that  sur- 
vives. Hence  the  belief  merely  exhibits  the  capacity  of  the  peo- 
ple and  its  acceptance  is  no  measure  of  the  truth  of  the  belief. 

There  is  a  remarkable  similarity  in  the  religions  of  mankind. 
Oppenheim^^  says  the  Hindoo^  Chrishna,  the  Persian  Mithras, 
the  Egyptian  Osiris,  the  sun  gods,  Hercules,  Dionysus  and  others, 
were  all  called  saviors  and  worshipped  as  such.  They  had  much 
the  same  history.  They  were  born  on  the  25th  of  December,  the 
day  when  the  sun  was  supposed  to  be  the  farthest  south,  they  all 
had  virgin  mothers,  and  the  Scandinavian  Frigga,  the  Buddhist 
Maya-Maya,  the  Egyptian  Isis,  the  Hindoo  Devaki,  the  Greek 
Semale  are  identical;  they  had  strikingly  similar  life  histories, 
they  performed  much  the  same  miracles,  the  number  of  their  dis- 
ciples was  curiously  often  alike,  they  were  persecuted,  slain  and 

**  The  Development  of  the  Child,  p.  122. 


194 


THE    EVOLUTION    OE    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


arose  from  the  dead  to  ascend  into  heaven.  A  triune  god  was 
worshipped  all  the  way  from  the  rugged  land  of  the  Scandinavi- 
ans to  the  fertile  banks  of  the  Egyptian  Nile.  The  Egyptians  in- 
troduced public  festivals,  processions  and  solemn  supplications, 
and  the  Greeks  learned  from  them,  says  Herodotus.  Isis  as  part 
of  the  trinity,  though  with  another  name,  standing  in  a  crescent 
moon,  was  a  common  image  and  her  effigy  with  the  infant  Horus 
in  her  arms  has  come  down  to  us  as  the  Madonna  and  child.  The 
Ephesians  forsook  their  Diana,  ''the  mother  of  God,"  for  the  Vir- 
gin, and  when  Cyrle  and  his  council  decreed  that  the  ancient  title 
was  conferred  on  the  Virgin  the  Ephesians  wept  for  joy. 

Man  is  in  a  certain  phase  of  his  being  religious,  he  seeks  a 
higher  power  for  praise  or  blame,  for  punishment  and  reward, 
and  according  to  his  intelligence  is  credulous  or  skeptical  of  the 
claims  of  those  who  announce  themselves  as  knowing  all  about 
God.  The  weaker  in  mind  are  most  prone  to  seek  religious  con- 
solation whether  imbecile  or  dying  and  the  undeveloped  emo- 
tional female  mind  is  notoriously  the  one  easiest  imposed  upon. 
The  child  is  most  receptive  of  the  ancient  accounts  of  miracles. 
His  inability  to  understand  properly  is  taken  advantage  of  and  he 
has  to  escape  later  from  belief  in  the  fables  he  has  been  taught. 
He  accepts  the  creeds  forced  on  him,  but  is  unable  to  assimilate 
the  reasoning  by  which  these  creeds  are  upset,  and  the  unrea- 
soning adult  often  sees  nothing  absurd  in  a  creed  which  consigns 
infants  to  hell  or  the  monkey  gravity  with  which  a  later  conven- 
tion of  sanctified  apes  concludes  that  this  part  of  the  creed  needs 
revising.  This  absurdity  of  occasional  revision  of  creeds  that  are 
worn  out  until  sometimes  there  is  nothing  left  of  the  creed,  or  it 
is  merely  ignored,  occurs  when  the  old  belief  is  inconvenient  and 
a  new  one  must  be  arranged.  But  these  creeds,  whether  they 
are  mended  or  not,  are  tacitly  accepted,  just  as  oaths  in  secret 
soci-eties  are  taken  without  previous  inquiry  into  their  nature. 

S.  L.  Clemens'*^  describes  the  harsh  measure  used  by  the  Chris- 
tian missionaries  in  China,  after  the  massacres  of  missionaries  and 
the  allied  powers'  retaliation,  indemnifying  themselves  one  and 
one-third  times  by  forced  means,  and  suggests  a  commandment : 
*'Thou  shalt  not  steal  except  when  it  is  the  custom  of  the  coun- 
.  "  North  American  Review,  April,  1901. 


SUPERSTITION.  .  I95 

try,"  Adopting  the  custom  of  the  Chinese,  revenge  instead  of 
Christian  forgiveness  is  ''spreading  the  gospel."  He  concluded 
that  those  missionaries  are  sincere,  self-sacrificing,  warm-hearted, 
all  heart  in  fact,  but  often  with  little  head;  their  judgment  is 
awry.  To  enable  the  religion  of  non-aggression  to  be  taught  the 
missionaries  resorted  to  Chinese  methods  of  aggression.  The 
fact  is  ''business"  methods  rule  such  organizations  and  the  mis- 
sionaries merely  submit  to  higher  orders. 

But  the  world  moves,  and  some  parts  faster  than  others,  and 
progress  continues  notwithstanding  the  clogs  and  impediments 
of  superstition  and  the  grab  instinct  that  takes  advantage  of  it. 
It  would  be  foolish  to  assert  that  all  religions  and  all  religious  in- 
stitutions and  priests  are  bad.  Such  is  far  from  being  the  case, 
but  any  institution  may  be  changed,  subverted,  corrupted,  and  so 
may  the  persons  connected  with  it.  Some  movements  are  bad 
from  their  very  start,  others  are  intended  to  be  only  good  and 
may  finally  be  corrupted.  A  vast  range  of  "belief"  and  cere- 
mony may  exist  in  the  same  denomination  at  distances  apart,  pre- 
cisely as  dialects  may  separate  original  languages.  The  Ameri- 
can churches  differ  greatly  from  the  European  owing  to  public 
schools  and  free  institutions  unfitting  Americans  for  slavery 
of  intellect.  Under  Spanish  rule  the  Philippine  friars  could  be 
oppressive,  but  intelligent  American  Catholics  made  such  repre- 
sentations to  Rome  that  the  pope  was  compelled  to  move  these 
autocratic  monks  to  Venezuela  and  Ecuador. 

The  "Truce  of  God"  began  in  A.  D.  1034,  necessitated  by  the 
fierce  incessant  private  and  public  wars  everywhere  in  Europe. 
Ecclesiastical  influence  induced  the  people  to  abstain  from  fight- 
ing at  least  on  holy  days,  and  so  in  this  instance  superstition  ex- 
erted a  power  for  good.  The  monasteries  of  the  middle  ages  were 
refuges  for  learning  and  enabled  students  to  escape  from  strife, 
though  this  was  incidental  among  communities  endeavoring  to 
obtain  a  living  without  work. 

The  crusaders  visiting  Rome  saw  that  personal  interest  had 
very  much  to  do  with  religious  control  and  in  additon  to  this  Mus- 
selmans  and  Christians  grew  better  acquainted  with  one  another 
and  found  that  interested  parties  had  lied  to  them  concerning 
foreigners  and  so  they  ceased  to  regard  each  other  as  wholly  bar- 


196  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

barian.  In  spite  of  the  bible  teaching  that  the  poor  are  to  be  es- 
pecially considered  the  churches  have  largely  fostered  the  idea 
that  ''God  made  the  rich  and  the  devil  the  poor."  Not  by  words 
but  by  acts.  The  feeling  is  very  prevalent  among  the  poor  that 
they  are  not  wanted  in  a  church  as  they  are  unsightly  and  can 
contribute  nothing  to  the  expenses.  And  even  an  occasional  Aztec 
descendant  thinks  of  such  things  as  inconsistencies.  One  ra- 
marked  that  after  all  he  did  not  think  much  of  his  sun  god  for  he 
could  only  go  one  way  while  men  go  anywhere  they  please. 

When  superstition  is  overworked  people  become  accustomed 
to  be  cursed  and  the  anathemas  cease  to  be  effective.  Prince 
Louis  of  France  did  not  hesitate  to  agree  to  take  the  English 
crown  though  excommunication  would  result,  caring  as  little  for 
this  as  his  father  cared  for  the  pope's  forgiveness  of  his  sins,  and 
interdicts  lose  force  also  in  time  if  too  often  used.  People  in 
King  John's  day  observed  that  the  sky  did  not  fall  because  the 
pope  was  angry,  and  finally  defied  him.  The  expectation  that 
Biela's  comet  would  destroy  the  earth  in  1832  was  taken  advan- 
tage of  to  terrify  the  people  of  Paris,  who  bought  seats  in  para- 
dise from  the  priests  at  very  high  prices.  After  a  battle  in  South 
America  the  bodies  of  the  soldiers  were  found  with  instructions 
to  St.  Peter  to  admit  the  bearer  to  heaven  as  he  had  paid  for  the 
privilege  to  the  priest  who  signed  the  pass. 

Reformers  have  often  sprung  from  within  an  institution  and 
have  successfully  spread.  Pelagianism  of  the  fifth  century  was 
started  by  the  monk  Pelagius,  who  brought  up  the  matter  of  free 
will  in  the  relation  of  the  divine  control,  provoking  a  great  intel- 
lectual discussion.  In  the  eleventh  century  a  young  Milan  priest 
named  Patereues  denounced  the  corruption  of  the  clergy  and 
brought  about  an  uprising.  The  Hyksos  rulers  of  Egypt  were 
monotheists  and  despised  the  polytheism  and  idol  worship  of  their 
predecessors.  In  B.  C.  2754  they  destroyed  the  temples  but  in  B. 
C.  1700  the  temples  were  restored,  showing  that  a  thousand  years' 
release  from  manifestations  of  superstition  will  not  kill  it  off  as 
an  inherent  human  possession.  As  long  as  man  exists  he  will  be 
more  or  less  superstitious  and  the  masses  will  be  more  so  than 
less  so. 

Notwithstanding  the  religious  contention  in  England  in  which. 


SUPERSTITION.  I97 

first  one  sect  was  slaughtered  and  then  another  in  civil  strife,  at 
last  when  Spain  threatened  England  under  a  religious  pretext  the 
English  Catholics  proved  their  loyalty  in  every  way.  Spain  again 
prate'd  in  1898  about  religion  justifying  all  that  country  did,  but 
only  one  priest  in  the  entire  United  States  asserted  publicly  that 
American  Catholics  should  join  with  Spain,  and  he  was  promptly 
suppressed  by  his  own  American  co-religionists.  Thus  there  ap- 
pears a  relativity  of  religious  bigotry.  Under  Elizabeth  patriot- 
ism triumphed  over  superstition.  The  English  of  different  sects 
were  more  to  one  another  than  strange  bloodthirsty  Spaniards 
could  be  to  English  Catholics.  And  in  the  very  nest  of  popery  the 
Italians  prefer  that  church  and  state  should  be  separate,  and 
surely  the  world  has  moved  indeed  when  Rome  shackles  its  em- 
peror and  recognizes  him  only  as,  a  priest.  Thus  separating  the 
priest-king  function  that  came  down  from  the  patesis  of  Baby- 
lon. 

The  Eleusinian  mysteries  among  the  ancient  Greeks  were  a 
source  of  faith  and  hope  to  the  initiated,  as  are  the  churches  of 
modern  times.  Secret  holy  doctrines  were  aroused  amid  solemn 
imposing  rites  with  promises  of  blessing  to  the  sincere  and  those 
with  pious  trust.  The  origin  is  in  a  mythical  antiquity  and  the 
priesthood  was  hereditary.  Isocrates  said,  ''Those  initiated  have 
sweeter  hope  of  eternal  life."  In  moments  of  great  peril  con- 
verts asked,  "Are  you  initiated  ?"  as  though  having  been  so  were 
preparation  for  another  life.  The  Goths  under  Alaric  in  395  de- 
stroyed the  temples  at  Eleusis  in  their  devastation  of  Greece  and 
the  rites  ceased.  In  this  we  have  a  probable  instance  of  morality, 
kindness  and  some  doctrine  of  eternal  life  preceding  the  Chris- 
tians, and  not  associated  with  other  religions.  But  it  does  not 
require  this  testimony  alone  to  show  that  the  multitude  of  reli- 
gions were  not  connected  with  the  best  emotions  of  the  human 
heart,  and  that  here  and  there  may  have  been  isolated  philosophies 
of  nature,  but  it  was  not  until  comparatively  recent  days  that  the 
attempt  was  made  to  make  religion  moral.  It  was  natural  that 
whatever  was  found  to  be  for  the  good  of  the  race  should  be  " 
formulated  by  some  thinker  or  philosopher,  and  in  time  it  would 
become  a  religion,  or  be  appended  to  some  existing  superstition 
by  way  of  reform  or  compromise. 


igH  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

The  Sandemonians  were  a  small  sect  founded  by  a  Scotchman 
at  the  time  of  the  American  revolution.  It  was  taught  by  them 
that  "an  intellectual  belief  would  insure  salvation  without  faith 
and  that  this  belief  would  insure  Christian  virtues." 

When  Alexander  issued  his  letters,  orders  and  decrees  styling 
himself  King  Alexander,  the  son  of  Jupiter  Ammon,  they  came 
to  the  inhabitants  of  Egypt  with  an  authority  that  can  now  hardly 
be  realized.  The  free-thinking  Greeks,  however,  put  on  such  a 
supernatural  pedigree  its  proper  value.  Olympias,  who,  of  course 
better  than  all  others  knew  the  facts  of  the  case,  used  to  jestingly 
say  that  she  wished  Alexander  would  cease  from  incessantly  em- 
broiling her  with  Jupiter's  wife.  Arrian,  the  historian  of  the 
Macedonian  expedition,  observes,  ''I  cannot  condemn  him  for  en- 
deavoring to  draw  his  subjects  into  the  belief  of  his  divine  origin, 
nor  can  I  be  induced  to  think  it  any  great  crime,  for  it  is  very  rea- 
sonable to  imagine  that  he  intended  no  more  by  it  than  merely  to 
procure  the  greater  authority  among  his  soldiers."*^.  The  Mace- 
donian rulers  of  Egypt  prostituted  the  religious  sentiments  of 
their  time  to  statecraft,  finding  in  it  a  means  of  governing  their 
lower  classes.  To  the  intelligent  they  gave  philosophy.  Con- 
stantine  found  public  sentiment  largely  leaning  toward  Christian- 
ity and  when  Diocletian  abdicated,  A.  D.  305,  saw  the  advantage 
of  heading  the  movement.  Place,  power,  profit,  were  in  view  of 
whoever  joined  the  conquering  sect.  Crowds  of  worldly  per- 
sons who  cared  nothing  about  its  religious  ideas  became  its  warm- 
est supporters.  Pagans  at  heart,  their  influence  was  soon  mani- 
fested in  the  paganization  of  Christianity  that  forthwith  ensued. 
But  the  emperor  did  not  conform  to  the  ceremonial  requirements 
of  the  church  until  the  close  of  his  evil  life,  A.  D.  337. 

There  are  sincere  workers  in  all  religions,  but  seldom  do  we 
find  the  broad  minded,  generous,  thoughtful  bishop  such  as  Man- 
zoni  mentioned,*^  who  did  all  he  could  to  lessen  the  plague  which 
the  ignorance  of  his  people  fed,  and  his  priests  could  not  fathom 
the  bishop's  intentions  or  ideas,  so  much  lower  in  intelligence 
were  they.  But' in  most  cases  the  higher  official  is  a  shrewd  self- 
seeker,  and  sincerity  exists  among  the  humble  who  refuses  to  use' 

**  Draper,  Conflict  of  Religion  and  Science,  p.  8. 
•^I  Promessi  Sposi. 


SUPERSTITION.  I99 

any  effort  at  intrigue  to  advance  himself  above  his  fellows.  The 
well-fed,  rosy,  wine-drinking,  sleek-clad,  finely  housed  and  at- 
tended rulers  are,  so  far  as  character  is  concerned,  the  least  worthy 
of  the  organization,  while  the  humble  missionary  on  a  starvation 
salary  is  often  the  one  who  redeems  an  otherwise  corrupt  body 
of  men. 

Such  men  as  De  Smet  and  Xavier  risked  their  lives  for  what 
they  sincerely  thought  to  be  the  best  interests  of  their  fellow  men, 
while  others  high  in  the  command  over  them,  with  lives  barren  of 
any  good  deed,  would  point  to  these  self-sacrificing  ones  and  say, 
"See  what  good  we  do!" 

It  does  not  follow,  either,  that  mere  lowness  of  station  guar- 
antees humility  of  heart,  goodness  or  even  ordinary  kindness. 
I  knew  a  priest  who  came  to  the  county  insane  asylum  to  visit 
the  attendants ;  he  arrived  at  the  asylum  only  upon  paydays,  and 
on  one  occasion  he  was  catechizing  a  demented  woman  and  hold- 
ing his  missal  over  his  head  he  commanded  her  to  answer  or 
he  would  strike  her  with  the  book.  The  vast  range  of  intelli- 
gence and  kindness  between  a  Xavier  and  such  a  priest  need 
scarcely  be  hinted. 

O.  W.  Holmes  notes  the  change  during  the  past  century  in 
men's  opinions  concerning  their  beliefs.  "Since  then  protestant- 
ism is  more  respectful  in  its  treatment  of  Romanism,  orthodoxy 
in  its  treatment  of  heterodoxy,  Christianity  in  its  handling  of 
humanity.  The  limitations  of  men  are  better  realized,  the  impos- 
sibility of  their  thinking  alike,  the  virtue  of  humility  is  found  to 
include  many  things  which  have  often  been  considered  outside 
its  province,  among  others  the  conviction  of  the  infallibility  of  our 
special  convictions  in  matters  of  belief  which  appeal  differently  to 
different  minds." 

"How  can  we  seek  a  single  faith  to  find, 
When  one  in  every  score  is  color  blind ; 
If  here  on  earth  they  can't  tell  red  from  green, 
Can  they  see  better  into  things  unseen  ?" 

As  an  indication  of  this  attempt  of  discordant  religions  to  be- 
come reconciled,  Lyman  Beecher  wrote  a  book  entitled  "Ten  Great 
Religions,"  in  which  there  was  a  ludicrous  but  sincere  endeavor 


200  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  boil  down  heterogeneous  "beliefs"  and  contradictions  of  dom- 
inant faiths;  the  neglected  million  or  so  of  other  superstitions 
should  have  been  at  least  referred  to.  The  only  possible  recon- 
ciliation is  on  the  basis  of  psychology  as  outgrowths  of  fear  and 
rapacity,  and  later  the  better  emotions  influencing  the  old  savage 
conceptions  of  deity. 

There  may  be  good  to  multitudes  in  religion,  but  it  must  not 
be  forgotten  that  it  affords  opportunity  to  the  scamp  who  seldom 
fails  to  take  advantage  of  it.  In  Mohammedanism,  Eddyism, 
Dowieism,  Mormonism,  we  see  the  money  pour  into  the  sanctuary 
from  the  simple-minded,  good,  honest,  sincere,  gullable  mob  who 
v./ould  not  be,  ordinarily,  bad  as  long  as  it  can  find  an  excuse  to 
be  good,  unless  directed  to  a  St.  Bartholomew  or  Mountain  Mead- 
ow massacre  by  their  priests. 

Agnosticism  is  expanding  because  from  the  ranks  of  intellec- 
tual thinkers  whose  conduct  is  guided  by  justice  and  morality  it 
will  descend  to  the  lawless  upon  whose  wicked  impulses  some  re- 
straint is  now  placed  by  the  fear  of  future  punishment,  but  how 
far  this  belief  does  restrain  them  is  quite  questionable,  more  than 
likely  those  who  accept  such  ideas  would  not  do  wrong  anyway, 
and  we  positively  know  that  multitudes  who  profess  the  most 
orthodox  religion,  including  fear  of  devils  and  hellfire,  are  in  no 
wise  made  better  or  deterred  from  evil  deeds.  Even  brigands  have 
their  father  confessors  and  churches. 

Huxley  leaves  his  mind  a  scientific  blank  on  questions  of  lunar 
politics  and  resents  the  claim  of  any  one  to  the  right  to  label  him 
as  believing  in  this,  that  or  the  other  matter.  The  agnostic  does 
not  find  it  necessary  to  have  an  opinion  on  every  subject.  It  is 
the  ignorant  who  always  has  one  and  asserts  it  with  confidence. 
Science  shows  that  man  made  god  after  his  own  image,  anthropo- 
morphism, and  then  claimed  the  reverse. 

Among  early  attempts  at  emancipation  from  traditional  drill- 
ing and  training  of  children  so  they  could  grow  up  into  servile 
instruments  to  the  greed  and  inconsideration  of  power  in  church 
and  state,  about  1360  the  ''Brethren  of  the  Common  Lot"  was 
founded  in  Europe  and  in  the  Netherlands  started  the  first  public 
schools.*^ 

^  W.  E.  Griffis,  The  Influence  of  the  Netherlands,  p.  3. 


SUPERSTITION.  20I 


The  fable  or  story  was  nearly  the  only  means  of  public  instruc- 
tion of  ancient  people  and  today  the  romance  and  drama  are 
powerful  means  of  reaching  the  masses,  who  could  not  be  induced 
to  learn  important  matters  otherwise.  Much  quickening  of  sym- 
pathy and  moral  training  is  obtained  through  well-acted  plays, 
particularly  such  as  Shakespeare's,  and  it  is  worth  considering  if 
more  humanitarian  ideas  do  not  filter  to  the  common  people 
through  that  source  than  from  any  other.  The  theater  in  Japan 
as  elsewhere  is  the  outgrowth  of  religious  rites  and  its  evolution 
may  be  said  to  have  been  from  empty  superstitious  ceremony,  sol- 
emn nonsense,  to  entertainment  and  incidentally  teaching  up- 
rightness and  other  things  that  make  people  better  citizens. 

When  the  illusions  vanish  and  delusions  are  destroyed,  when 
the  devout  finds  his  idols  made  of  clay  and  religions  hugged 
through  life  come  to  be  abandoned,  the  heart  grows  sick  and 
yearns  for  something  else  to  fasten  upon,  and  often  the  cry  goes 
up  ''What  use  is  it  to  disturb  beliefs  ?"  particularly  such  as  aflFord 
comfort  to  the  believer  ?  Well,  if  this  comfort  is  like  that  derived 
from  opium  or  whisky,  if  you  are  in  a  false  paradise  and  asleep  to 
danger,  if  your  mind  is  deadened  to  actualities  ''Cui  bono  ?"  may 
be  answered  that  you  are  given  the  truth,  you  are  freed  from  your 
superstitions,  your  ghosts,  terrors,  hobgoblins.  But  the  African 
in  his  wild  state  is  not  prepared  to  give  up  his  idols  for  intangible 
civilized  ideas.  The  mind  must  evolve,  adjust  to  such  changes 
slowly. 

In  his  ''Essay  on  Beauty,"  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  says : 
"Astrology  interested  us,  for  it  tied  man  to  the  system.  In- 
stead of  an  isolated  beggar,  the  farthest  star  felt  him,  and  he  felt 
the  star.  However  rash  and  however  falsified  by  pretenders  and 
traders  in  it,  the  hint  was  true  and  divine,  the  soul's  avowal  of  its 
large  relations,  that  climate,  century,  remote  natures  as  well  as 
near  are  part  of  its  biography.  Chemistry  takes  to  pieces  but  it 
does  not  construct.  Alchemy  which  sought  to  transmute  our  ele- 
ments into  another,  to  prolong  life,  to  arm  with  power — that  was 
in  the  right  direction.  All  our  sciences  lack  a  human  side.  The 
tenant  is  more  than  the  house.  Bugs,  and  stamens,  and  spores  on 
which  we  lavish  so  many  years,  are  not  finalities,  and  man,  when 
his  powers  unfold  in  order,  will  take  nature  along  with  him  and 


202  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

emit  light  into  all  her  recesses.  The  human  heart  concerns  us 
more  than  the  peering  into  microscopes,  and  is  larger  than  can 
be  measured  by  the  pompous  figures  of  the  astronomer." 

Had  Emerson's  broad  intellect  been  engaged  in  scientific  direc- 
tions he  would  have  been  heartily  ashamed  of  having  written  such 
stuff.  Herbert  Spencer  writes  that  science  opens  up  new  beau- 
ties in  the  universe  to  which  the  uninstructed  are  blind.  Hugh 
Miller,  Herschel,  Faraday,  Tyndall,  Huxley  could  have  made 
Emerson's  heart  leap  for  joy  at  their  revelations,  and  his  writings 
would  have  been  enhanced  in  their  power  for  good. 

The  very  reverse  of  Emerson's  idea  is  true. 

Astrology  and  alchemy  with  other  "philosophies"  of  the  days 
of  sorcery,  the  black  art  by  which  one  creature  hoped  to  be  able 
to  take  foul  advantage  of  another,  were  emanations  of  the  night 
of  time,  when  burnings  at  the  stake  were  frequent  alike  for  think- 
ers and  witches.  The  horoscope  is  still  cast  by  Indian  fakirs,  and 
astrology  thrives  amidst  appropriate  surroundings.  And  doubt- 
less Emerson  would  have  opened  his  eyes  in  surprise  if  asked 
whether  he  preferred  to  live  in  the  land  of  jungles  and  the  suttee 
rather  than  among -spectacles  and  baked  beans. 

Looking  back  over  the  evolution  of  the  sciences,  it  is  plain 
that  in  astrology  and  alchemy,  it  was  not  the  love  of  science  that 
actuated  these  studies;  the  object  primarily  was  puerile.  The 
philosopher's  stone,  which  would  transmute  all  metals  into  gold ; 
the  elixir  vitse,  which  was  to  confer  everlasting  youth,  were  the 
absurd  things  sought  for,  and  so  in  the  search,  expeditions 
throughout  the  world  were  actuated  by  greed  and  love  of  power. 
The  march  of  Coronado  hunting  for  the  seven  golden  cities,  Ponce 
de  Leon's  childish  rambles  through  Florida  looking  for  the  foun- 
tain of  youth,  are  instances  in  point. 

It  is  quite  probable  that  among  the  ancient  Roman,  Greek, 
and  Egyptian  priests  many  physical  laws  were  understood,  but 
the  only  use  they  made  of  them  was  to  deceive  the  people  and 
enrich  themselves.  Among  the  vast  multitude  of  today  such  a 
thing  as  cultivating  a  science  for  its  own  sake  or  to  benefit  the  pub- 
lic would  seem  absurd,  and  so  the  medical  student  of  lesser  cali- 
bre would  complain  upon  being  compelled  to  learn  chemistry  and 


SUPERSTITION.  203 

botany,  and  especially  bacteriology,  when  in  many  instances  all 
these  bear  directly  upon  general  medicine. 

Chemistry  sprang  from  alchemy,  and  astronomy  from  astrol- 
ogy. At  first  the  facts  that  were  discovered  could  not  be  used 
and  so  they  were  mainly  regarded  as  curiosities.  Eventually  these 
neglected  discoveries  were  found  to  be  of  great  use.  Had  it  been 
possible  for  the  childish  ancient  philosophers  to  have  developed 
the  sciences  to  their  present  status,  most  of  them  would  have  cer- 
tainly made  selfish  and  oppressive  uses  of  their  knowledge.  As 
knowledge  is  slow  of  growth,  so  it  broadens  the  intellect  of  its 
votaries,  making  them  more  merciful  and  considerate,  particularly 
nowadays  when  scientific  fakirism  is  not  so  possible  as  in  olden 
times;  and  so  it  would  seem  that  as  fast  as  the  world  deserves 
the  comforts  afforded  by  science  it  receives  them,  and  no  faster. 

Probably  even  in  the  future  if  the  elixir  vitse  were  compounded 
and  immortality  were  thus  placed  in  the  grasp  of  everyone,  no  one 
would  be  so  foolish  as  to  use  it,  for  all  would  realize  that  perpetual 
life  would  be  perpetual  suffering. 

Franklin  was  asked  once,  what  was  the  good  of  the  discovery 
of  the  galvanic  spark.  He  asked,  ''What  is  the  good  of  a  baby  ?" 
That  baby  has  since  grown  to  giant  size.  The  vast  accumulation 
oi  scientific  facts  by  which  the  world  is  today  beautified  and  made 
more  comfortable  have  been  piled  up  amid  sneers  and  opposition. 
The  olden  searcher  for  knowledge  wanted  to  make  a  short  cut  to 
power  over  his  fellow  men ;  the  student  of  today  learns  to  spread 
his  knowledge  as  a  means  of  helping  himself  through  helping 
others.  So  as  intellects  broaden,  men  find  that  by  all  working  for 
the  common  good,  the  individual  good  would  be  best  conserved. 

Imagine  Nero  or  Cleopatra  with  all  our  present  scientific 
knowledge  and  resources  at  command,  would  they  not  have  made 
the  earth  a  pitiable  planet  ?  But  this  knowledge  cannot  be  owned 
by  any  single  mind,  and  hence  working  in  unison  for  the  com- 
mon good  is  the  result  of  the  existence  of  that  knowledge. 

As  science  gradually  inculcated  altruism,  perforce,  the  geolo- 
gist idea  would  be  that  as  fast  as  the  world  deserved  good  things 
it  received  them,  but  the  more  rational  view  would  be  that  the 
comforts  and  conveniences  of  the  peaceful  arts  and  sciences  were 
the  product  of  mental  broadening,  and  that  egoism  developed  into 


204  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

an  altruism  through  selfish  realization  that  individual  interests  are 
best  secured  through  individuals  seeking  the  general  good. 

The  Emersonian  idea  of  ^'seeing  good  in  everything,"  rather 
persistently  sees  good  where  it  does  not  exist,  and  fails  to  recog- 
nize it  elsewhere.  -It  is  well  not  to  be  unjustly  captions  but  to 
deliberately  blind  yourself  to  the  superabounding  rascality  and 
designs  of  hypocrites  is  to  do  wrong  to  the  lambs  by  cultivating 
the  wolves  and  to  long  for  a  return  of  such  childish  arts  as  as- 
trology is  about  as  sensible  as  regretting  that  we  have  modern 
bath  tubs,  steamships  and  telegraphs.  Why  not  sigh  for  the  times 
when  we  had  only  the  skins  of  animals  to  cover  us  and  huddled 
together  in  trees  because  we  did  not  know  enough  to  kindle  fires  ? 
The  multitudes  consist  of  mere  simple  savages  appareled  in  civil- 
ized garb,  enjoying  what  the  few  thinkers  of  the  past  have  offered 
them.  Take  from  Emerson  what  the  real  arts  and  sciences  gave 
him  and  he  would  have  only  a  horoscope  marked  on  a  palm  leaf 
and  a  few  vermin  to  divide  his  attention. 

Socrates  died  a  martyr  to  intellectual  lioerty,  Erasmus  fought 
priestly  intolerance,  Giordano  Bruno  was  a  martyr  to  rights  of 
conscience,  the  founders  of  the  Dutch  Republic  achieved  both 
liberty  and  toleration,  Cromwell  befriended  the  persecuted  Jews, 
Voltaire  did  much  for  the  spirit  of  toleration.  Thomas  Paine, 
Jefferson  and  Madison  established  the  American  government  on 
the  basis  of  religious  freedom.  During  the  nineteenth  century  the 
idea  of  liberty  of  conscience  grew.  Bonnet-Maury^^  remarks  that 
"The  most  despotic  governments  are  tolerant  toward  the  subjects 
who  are  too  numerous  or  too  useful  to  be  killed  or  exiled."  The 
area  of  toleration  is  widening.  By  the  treaty  of  Westphalia  in 
1648  religious  equality  was  granted  to.  the  catholic  and  protestant 
churches  though  consistently  condemned  by  the  papacy.  Bismarck 
struggled  long  with  the  pope  in  vain.  In  self  defense  Germany 
was  compelled  to  drive  out  the  Jesuits  in  1872,  a  political,  not  a 
religious,  measure. 

Religious  progress  began  in  Austria  in  1848  and  by  the  law 
of  1868  liberty  was  extended  to  certain  churches  recognized  by 
the  government. 

The  Waldenses  were  emancipated  in  Italy  in   1848  and  the 

"  History  of  Liberty  of  Conscience. 


SUPERSTITION. 


205 


free  exercise  of  worship  was  guaranteed.  Since  1870  free  Italian 
churches  have  increased  and  even  in  bigoted  old  Spain  a  feeble 
religious  liberty  struggled  up  in  1869,  at  least  the  heathen  there 
may  worship  in  private  houses.  Switzerland  comes  next  to  Amer- 
ica in  religious  freedom.  Bonnet-Maury  thinks  that  since  the 
edict  of  tolerance  of  Louis  XVI.  respect  for  liberty  of  conscience 
has  grown. 

England,  Holland  and  Scandinavia  are  free  in  matters  of  wor- 
ship even  where  churches  are  state  institutions,  and  by  the  treaty 
of  Berlin  in  1878  Turkey  was  forced  to  tolerate  other  religions 
than  its  own  among  foreigners,  but  it  revenges  itself  on  helpless 
Armenians. 

The  English  act  of  toleration  of  1689  led  up  to  establishing 
rights  of  conscience,  and  finally  Jews,  unitarians  and  catholics 
were  included,  in  the  nineteenth  century,  until  the  British  domin- 
ions with  America  represent  the  most  abounding  freedom  to  think 
as  you  please  in  superstitious  or  religious  matters  so  long  as  you 
do  not  burn  witches  or  compel  others  to  adopt  your  ideas  on  these 
subjects.  An  old  definition  of  liberty  was  "to  be  able  to  do  as  you 
please  and  compel  others  to  do  the  same,"  and  that  is  about  the 
idea  many  would  have  of  religious  freedom.  Disestablishment 
of  the  English  church  will  be  the  next  great  step  to  getting  bar- 
nacles off  the  neck  of  Britons. 

China,  Mexico  and  South  America  have  fallen  into  modem 
lines  as  to  toleration.  In  the  United  States  the  Jews  have  not 
only  been  free  but  treated  with  a  fairness  never  before  equaled. 
James  Grant  Allen^^  says  Christians  threw  live  snakes  into  as- 
semblies of  other  Christians  of  whom  they  disapproved.  Bigotry 
or  the  worship  of  one's  own  opinion  is  giving  way  to  charity. 
Pulpits  even  are  occasionally  exchanged  by  representatives  of 
various  denominations.  In  such  and  other  matters  Professor 
Barrows  of  Oberlin  thinks  that  America  has  set  an  example  that 
will  be  universally  followed. 

The  thoughts  of  the  unlearned  common  people  are  determined 
by  perfectly  natural  laws,  they  incline  to  awe,  to  be  afraid  of  the 
unknown,  and  to  hand  down  from  a  still  more  unlearned  past  all 
sorts  of  goblin  and  fearful  stories,  about  such  as  the  vulgar  nurse 

'"  Reign  of  Law. 


206  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

tries  to  frighten  children  with.  The  average  unscrupulous  man 
with  a  little  higher  intelligence,  with  no  better  idea  than  that  the 
world  owes  him  a  living  finds  these  mental  attitudes  already  at 
hand  and  takes  advantage  of  them  to  control  the  crowd  through 
such  ideas,  as  demagogue  or  hypocrite.  Though  the  frequent 
sincerity  of  many  priests  and  politicians  cannot  be  doubted. 

In  the  multiplicity  of  religions  there  is  more  safety  for  the 
people.  Where  a  single  religion  is  dominant,  as  in  Russia,  the 
people  are  degraded  into  animals  by  the  priesthood,  who,  as 
Tolstoy  says,  openly  violate  every  tenet  of  Christianity,  while 
pretending  to  teach  it.  So  when  sect  after  sect  splits  off  from  old 
beliefs  it  is  the  disintegration  of  and  dissent  from  established 
superstition,  leading  finally  to  liberty  of  opinion,  and  escape  from 
old  methods  of  enslaving  the  mind;  a  weaker  master  is  chosen 
and  finally  there  is  emancipation. 

Between  the  extremes  of  denunciation  of  all  religion  and 
slavish  submission  to  a  belief  there  is  a  safe  middle  ground,  there 
is  the  devout  sincere  mother  who  accepts  religious  teaching  un- 
questioningly  and  imagines  that  her  goodness  is  wholly  due  to 
her  religion,  when  without  religion  she  would  have  been  every 
particle  as  good,  and  have  cared  for  her  children  just  as  anxiously, 
and  taught  them  just  as  carefully. 

Nor  are  the  ministers,  priests,  and  others  who  live  at  the 
altar  hypocrites,  by  any  manner  of  means.  Some  of  the  greatest 
and  most  sincere  intellects  have  been  in  all  religions,  usually  the 
best  being  in  the  humbler  ranks.  Many  have  died  for  their  beliefs 
proving  their  sincerity,  but  not  proving  that  their  beliefs  were 
therefore  true. 

When  the  ceremonies,  the  appeals  to  the  senses  and  emotions, 
are  things  of  the  past,  when  the  massive  churches,  closed  six  days 
in  the  week,  are  converted  to  the  uses  of  the  poverty-stricken  and 
other  sufferers,  when  "the  church  of  this  world"  develops  as  a 
means  of  helping  humanity  upward  and  onward,  then  religion 
will  have  passed  from  the  forest  of  monkeydom  to  the  broad  plain 
of  upright  intellectual  sympathetic  manhood. 

If  the  highest  religion  becomes  that  of  working  unselfishly 
for  other  individuals  and  the  race,  impelled  thereto  by  promptings 
that  have  become  innate,  emotional  and  intellectual,  you  may  say 


SUPERSTITION. 


207 


intellectualized  and  spontaneous,  then  Voltaire,  who  sought  the 
good  of  his  fellows  without  caring  to  gain  even  the  credit  for  it, 
whose  most  charitable  work  was  done  anonymously  so  that  it 
might  be  the  most  effective,  and  not  be  complicated  with  men- 
tion of  his  name  which  always  produced  vindictive,  lying  ani- 
mosity, will  be  regarded  as  among  those  who  possessed  this  high- 
est type  of  religion,  and  whose  happiness  in  his  work  was  recog- 
nized in  his  being  called  "the  laughing  philosopher." 

But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  while  mankind  is  mentally 
equipped  as  we  find  him,  some  kind  of  religion  is  necessary  for 
him  to  induce  him  to  behave  himself,  until  he  advances  intellec- 
tually to  the  point  where  he  can  do  right  from  choice  and  not 
through  fear. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 
LANGUAGE. 

Darwin^  says :  ''Quadrupeds  use  their  voices  for  various  pur- 
poses as  a  signal  of  danger,  as  a  call  from  one  member  of  a  troop 
to  another,  or  from  the  mother  to  her  lost  offspring,  or  from  the 
latter  for  protection  to  their  mothers."  Darwin  notes  the  differ- 
ences between  the  voices  of  the  two  sexes,  as  the  lion  and  the 
lioness,  bull  and  cow.  "Almost  all  male  animals  use  their  voices 
much  more  during  the  rutting  season  than  at  any  other  time,  and 
some  as  the  giraffe  and  porcupine  are  said  to  be  completely  mute 
except  at  this  season."  Old  stags  bellow  at  the  breeding  season 
and  be/ore  their  battles,  but  are  silent  during  the  battle.  Many 
animals  use  their  voices  under  strong  emotions  as  when  enraged 
and  preparing  to  fight,  just  as  a  man  grinds  his  teeth  and  clenches 
his  hands  in  rage  or  agony.  Stags  challenge  each  other  by  bel- 
lowing. The  lion  terrorizes  with  his  voice  and  erects  his  mane  to 
appear  formidable."  The  jealousy  and  rage,  continued  during 
many  generations,  may  at  least  have  produced  an  inherited  effect 
on  the  vocal  organs  of  the  stag  as  well  as  other  male  animals." 

The  male  gorilla  has  a  tremendous  voice  and  the  gibbons  rank 
among  the  noisiest  of  monkeys,  calling  to  each  other  as  the  beav- 
ers and  other  quadrupeds  do.  Hylobates  agilis  emits  a  correct 
octave  of  musical  notes  according  to  C.  L.  Martin^. 

Many  birds  have  organs  for  singing  but  do  not  sing  and  so 
apes  may  have  organs  for  speech  and  not  use  them  because  not 
trained  or  for  other  reason. 

Darwin^  says :  "The  diversity  of  the  sounds,  both  vocal  and 
instrumental  made  by  the  males  of  many  species  during  the  breed- 
ing season,  and  the  diversity  of  means  for  producing  such  sounds 

'Descent  of  Man,  Ch.  XVIII,  Vol.  II. 

==  Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  Ch.  XVIII,  Vol.  II. 

'Darwin,  Op.  Cit.,  Ch.  XIII,  Vol  III. 

208 


LANGUAGE.  209 

is  highly  remarkable,"  somewhat  as  insects  are  provided.  The 
bird  using  its  voice  as  a  mere  call  could  have,  step  by  step,  im- 
proved it  into  melodious  love  song.  ''It  is  curious  that  in  some 
classes  of  animals  sounds  so  different  as  the  drumming  of  the 
snipe's  tail,  tapping  of  the  wood-pecker's  beak,  harsh  trumpet- 
like cry  of  certain  waterfowl,  the  cooing  of  the  turtle  dove,  and 
song  of  the  nightingale,  should  all  be  pleasing  to  females  of  the 
several  species.  By  chirps  and  songs  the  parent  bird  warns  of 
approaching  danger,  calls  to  mates  or  cheers  its  young.  Darwin 
thinks  the  sounds  uttered  by  birds  offer  in  several  respects  the 
nearest  analogy  to  language.  The  same  instinctive  cries  ape  used 
to  express  emotions.  They  learn  songs  from  their  parents.  Some 
birds  of  the  same  genus  differ  from  others  in  speech  as  do  people 
in  dialects.  "An  instinctive  tendency  to  acquire  an  art  is  not 
peculiar  to  man."^  Some  birds  rehearse  in  private  and  practice 
improves.  Bird  songs  are  the  result  of  imitation  and  account  for 
development  of  bird-language  in  the  past.  In  the  least  specialized 
birds  the  speech  is  infantile.  Next  comes  a  screaming  or  croak- 
ing. Samuel  N.  Rhoads^  classifies  bird  language  into  three  stages 
of  mimetic  development,  i.  Mimics  of  sound  in  animate  nature 
exclusive  of  other  bird  notes.  2.  Mimics  of  sounds  in  inanimate 
nature.  3.  Mimics  of  song  and  human  language,  and  he  sepa- 
rates the  sound  mimics  into  mimics  of  water  and  wind  sounds, 
rippling,  raining,  rushing  water,  and  the  blowing,  whistling  of 
the  wind.  He  concludes  that  ''between  two  opposing  tendencies, 
one  urging  to  variation  the  other  to  permanence  (for  nature  itself 
is  half  radical,  half  conservative)  the  language  of  birds  has  grown 
from  rude  beginnings  to  its  present  beautiful  diversity,  and  who- 
ever lives  a  century  of  milleniums  hence  will  listen  to  music  such 
as  one  in  this  day  can  only  dream  of.  Inappreciably  but  cease- 
lessly the  work  goes  on.  Here  and  there  is  bom  a  master  singer, 
a  feathered  genius  and  every  generation  makes  its  own  addition 
to  the  glorious  inheritance."  Bird  sounds  occur  in  great  variety, 
one  has  a  note  like  breaking  of  glass,  another,  the  bell  bird,  makes 
a  noise  like  the  ringing  of  a  bell,  sometimes  like  the  striking  of 
an  anvil.    The  horrible  laugh  of  the  Demarara  goat  sucker  sounds 

Mbid. 

"  American  Naturalist,  1889,  P-  95- 


2IO  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  some  hearers  as  though  some  one  were  being  murdered.  The 
jackass  penguin  brays  Hke  a  donkey  and  the  laughing  king-fisher, 
or  laughing  jackass  of  Australia,  is  often  mentioned.  The  boom 
of  the  bittern  was  a  familiar  sound  in  many  parts  of  England 
before  the  drainage  of  the  fens.  The  American  species  makes  a 
noise  like  hitting  a  stake  with  a  mallet.  The  night  heron  has  a 
hoarse  croak.  The  fin-foot  can  make  a  deep  growling  sound 
like  a  wild  beast  by  drawing  air  into  its  body  and  forcing  it  grad- 
ually from  a  duck-like  throat.  Snipe  make  a  drumming  noise, 
but  only  as  they  swoop  down  with  half  closed  wings  and  out- 
spread tail,  compared  with  the  bleating  of  the  goat.  W.  H.  Hud- 
son says  that  in  Argentina  the  screamers  merely  utter  their  power- 
ful scream  of  alarm  occasionally,  while  at  night  or  high  in  the 
air  they  are  melodious  and  often  congregate  and  sing  in  concert 
and  at  intervals,  counting  the  hours  as  the  Guachos  say,  somewhat 
as  our  domestic  rooster  does.  The  screamers  are  the  noisiest 
about  nine,  midnight  and  before  dawn,  but  varying  in  different 
districts. 

The  lapwing  of  India  is  called  "did-he-do-it"  from  his  cry 
which  alarms  all  worthier  game  and  is  cordially  hated  in  conse- 
quence. Stilts  of  the  plover  tribe-  draw  you  away  from  their 
nests  with  their  cry:  "kit,  kot,  kit."  The  starling  is  a  mimic 
and  is  able  to  copy  familiar  sounds  faithfully,  and  is  a  very  good 
vocalist.  In  Argentina  spring  is  announced  by  spine-tails  with 
harsh  discordant  notes.  The  lyre-bird  imitates  songs  and  cries 
of  other  birds  and  has  play  grounds  like  bower  birds,  each  having 
its  awn  parade  ground.  The  long  tailed  trogan  has  a  ventriloqual 
plaintive  ha-hau,  which  sounds  a  long  way  off  though  the  bird 
may  be  near  you.  The  spur-fowl  of  Ceylon  similarly  misleads 
sportsmen  and  the  purple  capped  lory  is  a  ventriloquist.  The 
Australian  black  swan  has  a  musical  call  note  when  flying  over- 
head at  night.  The  bull  finch  can  be  taught  to  whistle  the  notes 
of  human  songs  quite  sweetly. 

The  male  white  capped  tanager  remains  near  the  nest  and 
jerks  out  low  notes  of  melody  as  though  chattering  love  to  the 
female  on  the  nest.  A.  G.  Butler  tells  of  a  blue  robbin  that  ''gave 
e^iery  insect  he  could  catch  to  his  sweetheart  who  coyly  refused 
him  for  a  fortnight,  and  when  finally  accepted  he  shrieked  with 


LANGUAEG.  211 

joy  for  half  an  hour  before  and  ten  minutes  after  the  pairing." 
Parrots  and  some  other  birds  are  able  to  articulate  and  while  in 
the  main  the  words  are  not  associated  with  ideas  in  their  minds 
in  a  few  instances  the  words  may  be  connected  with  definite 
meanings  for  them.  Song  and  call  notes  of  birds  are  learned 
from  parents  or  foster-parents  and  are  no  more  innate  than  is 
the  language  of  man.  The  ability  to  develop  the  sounds  is  in,- 
herited  but  the  language  is  gained  through  instruction.  The  first 
attempts  of  a  bird  to  sing  may  be  compared  to  the  imperfect  en- 
deavor of  a  child  to  babble.  Birds  of  the  same  species  at  a  dis- 
tance from  one  another  have  dialects  and  allied  though  distinct 
species  have  separate  languages. 

The  domesticated  fowl  has  a  dozen  significant  sounds  one  of 
which  gives  warning  for  danger  as  from  hawks,  and  hens  recog- 
nize this  signal. 

The  house  mouse  is  fond  of  music  to  which  it  listens  atten- 
tively, and  there  are  singing  mice.  One  was  known  to  trill  up  an 
octave  standing  upon  its  hind  legs  and  its  throat  vibrated  like 
that  of  a  song  bird.  Male  frogs  and  toads  are  musical.  Hylae 
are  quite  harmonious  chirpers.  The  chirping  of  a  cricket  is 
caused  by  the  rubbing  of  the  fore  wings,  elytra,  together.  Their 
organs  of  hearing  are  on  their  fore  legs.  If  a  man  could  leap  in 
proportion  to  his  height  as  far  as  a  flea  does  in  proportion  to  his, 
he  could  jump  a  hundred  feet,  and  if  a  man  could  sing  as  loud 
as  a  grasshopper  cicada,  his  voice  would  be  heard  many  miles. 
A  hoarse  rumble  in  the  throat  of  the  elephant  indicates  anger  or 
want  as  when  a  calf  is  calling  for  its  mother.  Pleasure  is  ex- 
pressed by  a  continued  low  squeaking  through  the  trunk.  The 
shrill  trumpet  varies  in  tone  and  expresses  sometimes  fear  or 
anger.  A  roar  from  the  throat,  fear  or  pain.  Alarm  or  dislike 
is  indicated  by  rapping  of  the  trunk  upon  the  ground  and  blowing 
through  it  at  the  same  time,  as  when  a  tiger  is  present. 

Livingstone  says  there  is  but  little  difference  between  the  roar 
of  the  lion  and  that  of  the  ostrich.  The  amount  of  noise  one 
wolf  can  make  is  surprising.  And  wolves  learn  to  bark  by  asso- 
ciation with  domestic  dogs.  The  Australian  dingo  or  wild  dog 
never  barks. 


212  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Ants  communicate  with  their  antennae  by  what  can  be  called 
touch  sense  gesture,  comparable  to  deaf  and  dumb  signs.  Various 
noises  such  as  croaking,  snapping,  etc.,  are  made  by  certain  spe- 
cies of  fish.  The  drumming  noise  of  the  Umbrinas  is  said  to  be 
heard  from  a  depth  of  twenty  fathoms.  The  males  alone  make 
the  noise  to  attract  females. 

Batrachians  are  noisy  fellows  during  the  breeding  season. 
The  females  select  the  males  with  loudest  or  most  pleasing  voices. 
The  male  Galapagos  tortoise,  Testudo  nigra,  at  the  pairing  sea- 
son utters  a  hoarse  bellowing  noise  and  the  female  is  dumb.  The 
crocodile  makes  a  great  noise  and  splash  and  swells  up  to  attract 
the  female,  as  little  boys  run  and  parade  before  their  little  girl 
admirers,  and  the  knights  errant  of  old  swaggered  before  their 
lady  observers. 

Darwin  observes  that  the  domesticated  dog  has  learned  to 
bark  in  four  or  five  tones.  The  bark  of  eagerness  as  in  the  chase, 
of  anger  as  well  as  growling,  the  yelp  or  howl  of  despair,  the 
baying  at  night,  the  bark  of  joy  and  the  one  of  demand  or  suppli- 
cation. Dogs  understand  many  words  and  sentences.  They  are 
at  the  same  stage  as  infants  at  ten  or  twelve  months  who  under- 
stand many  words  but  cannot  speak.  Max  Miiller  thinks  that 
animals  cannot  form  ideas,  but  Darwin  denies  this  and  shows 
that  a  dog  forms  an  idea  of  cats  or  sheep  and  knows  the  words 
as  well  as  a  philosopher,  and  it  is  proof  of  a  vocal  intelligence 
to  an  inferior  degree. 

Bears  leave  messages  and  warnings  by  scratches  and  odors 
left  on  barks  of  trees  and  dogs  communicate,  as  may  be  readily 
observed  by  any  one,  with  other  dogs  by  leaving  their  odors  on 
posts,  stumps,  stones  or  any  convenient  object  above  ground  and 
other  dogs  recognize  the  route  of  friends  or  strangers  by  nosing 
around  these  canine  intelligence  offices.  Miserly  crows  are  said 
to  be  able  to  count  thirty  and  to  drill  and  talk  to  their  young. 

The  speech  of  animals  is  unknown  to  us  and  often  for  similar 
reasons  we  cannot  distinguish  foreigners  apart. 

R.  L.  Garner^  studied  the  speech  of  various  monkeys  and  de- 
termined nine  sounds  used  by  the  Capuchins,  and  the  sound  for 

"  The  Soeech  of  Monkeys,  1892. 


LANGUAGE.  213 

food  and  another  for  alarm  in  the  Resus  dialect.  A  brown  Cebus 
readily  understood  the  phonograph  sound  of  his  call  for  food  and 
fled  in  alarm  when  he  heard  the  note  of  danger.  Garner  con- 
cludes that  the  sounds  made  by  monkeys  are  voluntary,  deliber- 
ate and  articulate.  They  are  always  addressed  to  some  certain 
individual  with  the  evident  purpose  of  having  them  understood. 
The  monkey  indicates  by  his  own  acts  and  the  manner  of  delivery 
that  he  is  conscious  of  the  meaning  of  the  sounds.  They  wait 
for  and  expect  an  answer  and  if  they  do  not  receive  one  they  fre- 
quently repeat  the  sounds.  They  usually  look  at  the  person  ad- 
dressed, and  do  not  utter  these  sounds  when  alone  or  as  a  mere 
pastime,  but  only  at  such  times  as  someone  is  present  to  hear 
them,  either  some  person  or  another  monkey.  They  understand 
the  signs  made  by  other  monkeys  of  their  own  kind  and  usually 
respond  to  them  with  a  like  sound.  They  understand  these 
sounds  when  imitated  by  a  human  being,  by  a  whistle,  a  phono- 
graph or  other  mechanical  devices,  and  this  indicates  that  they 
are  guided  by  the  sounds  alone,  and  not  by  any  gestures  or  mental 
influence.  The  same  sound  is  interpreted  to  mean  the  same  thing 
and  obeyed  in  the  same  manner  by  different  monkeys  of  the  same 
species.  Different  sounds  are  accompanied  by  different  gestures, 
and  produce  different  results  under  the  same  conditions.  They 
make  their  sounds  with  their  vocal  organs  and  modulate  them 
with  the  teeth,  tongue  and  lips.  The  fundamental  sounds  appear 
to  be  pure  vowels,  but  faint  traces  of  consonants  are  found  in 
many  words,  especially  those  of  low  pitch.  Darwin  notes  that 
in  Paraguay  the  Cebus  azarae  utters  at  least  six  distinct  sounds 
which  excite  in  monkeys  emotions  corresponding  to  the  sounds. 
The  movement  of  features  and  gestures  of  monkeys  are  under- 
stood by  us  and  they  partly  understand  our  expressions  of  the 
kind.  Some  gibbon  apes  sing,  and  Professor  Hseckel  claims  that 
the  gibbon  speaks  quite  fluently.  He  has  not  many  sounds  but 
these  few  he  uses  with  so  much  expression  that  he  is  able  to  make 
known  a  great  variety  of  wishes  and  impressions.  He  talks 
almost  constantly  and  even  when  left  alone  he  speaks  to  himself. 
The  Hylobates  leuciscus  or  ash  gray  gibbon  of  Wagner  spe- 
cially investigated  by  Haeckel  uses  his  few  words  with  gestures 
and  face  grimaces  and  tones  so  that  the  Javanese  can  understand 


2IA  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

his  meaning,  wishes  and  troubles.  The  oa,  as  he  is  called,  purrs 
like  a  cat  when  satisfied  and  at  play  uses  loud  sounds.  He  shouts 
for  food  with  outstretched  hands.  The  monkey-chatter  may  be 
likened  to  "metaphysics"  which  Miiller  calls  a  disease  of  language. 

The  chattering  of  some  monkeys  may  convey  their  meaning 
by  modulations  or  intonations  somewhat  as  a  prolonged  or  inter- 
rupted whistle  may  be  different  signals.  According  to  Blanford 
the  voice  and  gestures  of  all  macacques  are  similar,  quoting  Col- 
onel Tickell,  another  observer,  who  says,  ''anger  is  generally  sil- 
ent or  a  hoarse  "heu."  Ennui  is  expressed  by  a  whining  "hom,'^ 
Invitation,  deprecation,  entreaty,  by  smacking  of  lips  and  grin- 
ning and  a  chuckle.    Fear  by  '*kra"  or  "kraouk." 

The  chacma  baboon  has  a  warning  cry  like  the  German 
"hoch,"  much  prolonged.  The  capuchin  monkey  cries  with  a  low 
whistle  which  serves  to  attract  attention.  The  Indri  lemur's 
plaintive  mournful  cries  resemble  agonized  human  wailings.  The 
aye-aye  (lemur)  is  called  Hi-Hi  by  the  natives  from  the  sound  it 
makes.  It  taps  the  bark  and  listens  for  its  prey  beneath,  thus 
saving  time  and  labor.  The  howlers  use  their  drum  shaped 
larynx  with  little  effort;  the  noise  is  probably  useful  in  driving 
away  enemies.  Travelers  speak  of  the  sounds  as  dreadful.  The 
young  orang  screams  like  a  child  for  what  it  wants.  The  gibbon 
greets  the  rising  and  setting  sun  with  cries  morning  and  evening 
sounding  like  "Hoo-lock,"  and  suggests  that  name  to  the  natives, 
or  ''whoop-poo." 

Music,  says  Darwin,  affects  every  emotion,  but  does  not  in 
itself  excite  in  us  the  most  terrible  feelings  of  horror,  rage,  etc. 
It  awakes  the  gentler  feelings  of  tenderness  and  love  which 
readily  pass  into  devotion.  It  likewise  stirs  up  in  us  the  sensa- 
tion of  triumph  and  the  glorious  ardor  of  war.  These  powerful 
and  mingled  feelings  may  well  give  rise  to  the  sense  of  sublimity. 
We  can  concentrate,  as  Dr.  Seeman  observes,  greater  intensity 
of  feeling  in  a  single  musical  note  than  in  pages  of  writing. 
Nearly  the  same  emotions,  but  much  weaker  and  less  complex, 
are  probably  felt  by  the  birds  when  the  male  pours  forth  his  vol- 
ume of  song  in  rivalry  with  other  males,  for  the  sake  of  capti- 
vating the  female.  Love  is  still  the  commonest  theme  of  our  own 
songs.     As  Herbert  Spencer  remarks,  music  arouses  dormant 


LANGUAGE.  215 

sentiments  of  which  we  had  not  conceived  the  possibiHty,  and  we 
do  not  know  the  meaning ;  or,  as  Richter  says,  "tells  us  of  things 
we  have  not  seen  and  shall  not  see."  Conversely,  when  vivid 
emotions  are  felt  and  expressed  by  the  orator  or  even  in  common 
speech,  musical  cadences  and  rhythm  are  instinctively  used. 
Monkeys  also  express  strong  feelings  in  different  tones,  anger  and 
impatience  by  low,  fear  and  pain  by  high  notes.  The  sensations  and 
ideas  excited  in  us  by  music  or  by  the  cadences  of  impassioned 
oratory,  appear  from  their  vagueness  yet  depth,  like  mental  rever- 
sions to  the  emotions  and  thoughts  of  a  long-past  age.  All  these 
facts  with  respect  to  music  become  to  a  certain  extent  intelligible 
if  we  may  assume  that  musical  tones  and  rhythm  were  used  by 
the  half-human  progenitors  of  man,  during  the  season  of  court- 
ship, when  animals  of  all  kinds  are  excited  by  all  passions.  In 
this  case  from  the  deeply-laid  principle  of  inherited  associations, 
musical  tones  would  be  likely  to  excite  in  us,  in  a  vague  and  in- 
definite manner,  the  strong  emotions  of  a  long  past  age.  Bearing 
in  mind  that  the  males  in  some  quadrumanous  animals  have  their 
vocal  organs  much  more  developed  than  in  the  females,  and  that 
one  man-like  species  pours  forth  a  whole  octave  of  musical  notes 
and  may  be  said  to  sing,  the  suspicion  does  not  appear  improbable 
that  the  progenitors  of  man,  either  the  males  or  females  or  both 
sexes,  before  they  had  acquired  the  power  of  expressing  their 
love  in  articulate  language,  endeavored  to  charm  each  other  with 
musical  notes  and  rhythm.  So  little  is  known  about  the  use  of 
the  voice  by  the  quadrumana  during  the  season  of  love  that  we 
have  hardly  any  means  of  judging  whether  the  habit  of  singing 
was  first  acquired  by  the  male  or  female  progenitors  of  mankind. 
Women  are  said  to  possess  sweeter  voices  than  men,  and  as  far 
as  this  serves  as  any  guide  we  may  infer  that  they  first  acquired 
musical  powers  to  attract  the  other  sex.  But  if  so,  this  must 
have  occurred  long  ago,  before  the  progenitors  of  man  had  be- 
come sufficiently  human  to  treat  and  value  their  women  as  use- 
ful slaves.  The  impassioned  orator,  bard  or  musician,  when  with 
his  varied  tones  and  cadences  he  excites  strong  emotions  in  his 
hearers  little  suspects  that  he  uses  the  same  means  by  which,  at 
extremely  remote  periods,  his  half  human  ancestors  aroused  each 
other's  ardent  passions,  during  their  mutual  courtship  and  rivalry. 
Spencer  derives  modern  songs   from  the  ancient   recitative  or 


2l6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

mere  monotonous  "sing-song"  of  the  early  wandering  poet  who 
flattered  kings  and  others  in  power  by  boasting  of  their  deeds.  In 
still  ruder  times  ''discordant  noises,  the  beating  of  tom-toms  and 
the  shrill  notes  of  reeds  pleased  the  savage  ear."'^  Sir  S.  Baker 
remarks  that  "as  the  stomach  of  the  Arab  prefers  the  raw  meat 
and  reeking  liver  taken  hot  from  the  animal  so  does  his  ear  prefer 
the  discordant  noises  to  all  others." 

Canon  Kingsley  in  his  Hypatia  eloquently  describes  the  beau- 
tiful sacred  music  heard  in  the  temples  of  the  heathen  gods  in 
Alexandria  and  elsewhere,  and  among  the  Mormons  of  Utah 
popular  airs  such  as  "Lilly  Dale"  were  excellently  sung  in  the 
great  tabernacle  in  Salt  Lake  City,  but  to  words  expressing  hatred 
and  revenge.  Every  religion  has  found  singing  to  be  a  good 
accessory  means  of  arousing  devotion.  It  was  recorded  that  the 
Mohammedans  sang  and  wept  with  joy  as  they  dragged  their 
cannons  over  the  Macedonian  mountains  thinking  that  their  con- 
quest of  the  Greeks  was  the  forerunner  of  Mohammed's  prophecy 
that  his  followers  should  rule  the  world.  It  is  a  great  shock  to 
one  influenced  by  sacred  music  to  learn  that  other  religions  and 
even  pagan  idol  worshippers  make  use  of  beautiful  harmony  and 
melody  in  their  devotions. 

While  the  original  Hawaiian  music  was  very  monotonous 
and  more  a  bumpy-time-keeping  for  their  sacred  dances,  the  pres- 
ent generation  of  natives  sing  as  well  as  Europeans  and  their 
love  songs  are  peculiarly  pathetic  and  are  much  admired. 

Professor  Ensel  of  the  Music  Teachers  Association  is  respon- 
sible for  the  statement  that  when  the  army  of  the  first  Napoleon 
was  in  Egypt  in  1799  the  camp  for  awhile  was  near  the  pyramids. 
One  afternoon  about  sunset  the  band  was  playing.  The  inhabi- 
tants of  the  desert  had  collected  near  and  were  listening  to  the 
music.  Nothing  unusual  happened  until  the  band  struck  up 
"Malbrook  s'en  va  t'en  guerre,"  better  known  to  English  speak- 
ing people  as  "We  won't  go  home  till  morning."  Instantly  there 
was  the  wildest  joy  among  the  Bedoins.  They  embraced  each 
other  and  shouted  and  danced  in  delirious  pleasure.  The  reason 
was  that  they  were  listening  to  the  favorite  and  oldest  tune  of 
their  people.  Professor  Ensel  said  that  the  tune  had  been  taken 
'Darwin,  Descent  of  Man,  Ch.  XIII,  Vol.  II. 


LANGUAGE.  217 

from  Africa  to  Europe  in  the  thirteenth  century  by  the  crusaders 
and  had  Hved  separately  in  both  countries  for  six  hundred  years. 
It  had  been  in  France  years  before  Marlborough  was  playing 
havoc  with  French  soldiery  in  Malplaquet,  Blenheim  and  Ramilies 
in  Queen  Anne's  time.  Malbrook  was  the  nearest  approach  to 
the  pronunciation  of  Marlborough.  **There  is  a  happy  land  far 
far  away"  are  the  words  adapted  to  an  ancient  Hindoo  national 
air,  the  accent  being  on  the  first  note  of  each  bar,  an  archaic 
method  adjusted  to  timbrel  rattling  and  the  jingling  of  the  ank- 
lets. Even  today  children  unconsciously  copy  this  in  starting 
each  line  with  loud  stress  on  the  first  words.  This  adaptation  of 
music  of  the  "enemy"  by  preachers  is  quite  an  old  story.  It  was 
Charles  Wesley  who  said  that  he  could  not  understand  why  the 
devil  should  have  all  the  good  music  and  thereupon  put  many  of 
his  brother  John's  hymns  and  his  own  to  the  popular  songs  of 
the  day.  The  experiment  was  successful  and  this  capture  of  well 
known  song  tunes  was  the  beginning  of  that  congregational  sing- 
ing characteristic  of  the  methodist  church.  Moody  and  Sankey 
followed  in  Wesley's  footsteps.  Missionaries  to  the  Hawaiian 
Islands  adapted  native  words  to  old  English  hymn  tunes  so  that 
Hawaiian  music  is  merely  New  England  hymns. 

It  is  well  known  that  the  piano  evolved  from  the  harp  but  it 
is  not  so  well  known  that  the  bag-pipe  (utricularius)  was  known 
in  the  time  of  Nero.  Some  musicians  claim  that  the  highest 
music  is  represented  by  Beethoven's  sonata.  An  instance  of  pre- 
human music  is  afforded  by  the  time  marking  thumping  by  the 
chimpanzee  on  his  drum  of  clay.  An  evidence  of  the  love-making 
intention  of  musical  cultivation  lies  in  the  fact  that  so  many  good 
piano  players  among  women  abandon  their  music  altogether  after 
marriage.  R.  E.  C.  Stearns^  experimented  upon  animals  with 
music  with  the  result  of  the  discovery  that  among  those  who  love 
music  may  be  included  pigeons,  hares,  seals,  hippopotami,  squir- 
rels, mice,  pigs,  sheep,  goats,  oxen,  cows.  Cats  try  to  get  as  near 
your  mouth  as  possible  to  ascertain  the  source  of  the  whistling  or 
singing.  Some  are  made  uneasy  but  others  evidently  relish  music. 
Of  course  birds  are  attracted  by  music.  The  wolf,  hyena  and  dog 
are  frightened  by  music  while  the  alligator  appeared  to  be  indif- 
*  American  Naturalist,  Feb.  and  March,  1890. 


2l8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ferent  to  it.  Others  have  observed  that  some  dogs  did  not  object 
to  piano  playing  but  howled  dismally  when  a  cornet  or  violin  was 
tried.    Wolves  can  be  started  to  howling  by  whistling. 

Language  owes  its  origin,  in  Darwin's  opinion,  to  imitation 
and  modifications  of  imitations  of  various  natural  sounds,  the 
voices  of  other  animals  and  man's  own  instinctive  cries  aided  by 
signs  and  gestures.  Primeval  man,  says  Spencer,  probably  first 
used  his  voice  in  courtship  singing,  and  by  analogy  this  power 
would  have  been  especially  exerted  to  express  various  emotions 
as  love,  jealousy,  triumph,  and  as  a  challenge  to  rivals.  Imitation 
is  strong  in  low  races,  monkeys  and  idiots.  Man  alone  can  asso- 
ciate together  the  most  diversified  sounds  and  ideas  and  this 
depends  upon  the  high  development  of  his  mental  powers. 

Articulate  language  is  practically  confined  to  man  but  he  uses 
inarticulate  cries  as  do  animals,  aided  by  gestures  and  grimaces, 
especially  with  regard  to  simple  feelings  that  are  but  little  con- 
nected with  higher  intelligence.  Our  cries  of  pain,  fear,  surprise, 
anger,  with  appropriate  actions,  and  the  murmur  of  the  mother 
to  her  beloved  child  are  more  expressive  than  words.  Darwin 
suggests  that  the  imitation  of  a  growl  of  a  beast  of  prey  by  some 
ape-like  animal  used  to  warn  his  fellows  could  have  been  the  first 
step  in  language.  While  mind  developed  language  the  latter  also 
reacted  upon  r^md  to  develop  it  further  especially  where  thoughts 
required  words,  just  as  calculation  does  figures  and  symbols. 

Sayce  thinks  that  the  speechless  man  of  earliest  times  ex- 
pressed himself  as  the  Bushmen  of  Australia  do  now  by  means 
of  clicks,  and  the  Hottentot  ''clop-slop-flop"  language  causing 
Hollanders  to  name  tribes  from  the  sounds  made  by  their  talking, 
further  shows  how  there  may  be  many  dififerent  methods  of  speak- 
ing.   Many  tribes  omit  consonants  familiar  to  us. 

Man  is  born  mute  and  depends  upon  teachers  for  language, 
so  man  existed  before  the  use  of  language  was  known.  Hens- 
leigh  Wedgwood^  refers  to  foreigners  resorting  to  gestures  when 
trying  to  make  themselves  understood  when  the  language  of  the 
place  is  unknown,  and  he  quotes  the  lines  of  Tom  Hood : 

'The  Origin  of  Language,  London,  1866. 


LANGUAGE.  219 

"Moo,  I  cried,  for  milk, 

If  I  wanted  bread, 

My  jaws  I  set  a-going, 

And  asked  for  new  laid  eggs  . 

By  clapping  hands  and  crowing." 
Miiller  tells  of  an  Englishman  asking  his  Chinese  cook  about 
some  meat  he  had  eaten :    ''Quack,  quack  ?"    The  Chinaman  re- 
plied ''Bow-wow." 

Garrick'Mallery^"  divides  gesture  speech  into  body,  limb  and 
face  motions  and  refers  to  the  instance  of  Gallaudet,  the  famous 
instructor  of  deaf-mutes,  who  by  means  of  his  facial  movements, 
and  with  his  arms  folded,  imparted  the  story  of  Brutus  killing 
his  two  sons  to  a  pupil  who  afterwards  wrote  correctly  what  he 
understood  the  teacher  to  have  told  by  his  face  alone. 

The  gestures  of  young  children,  especially  pouting,  are  iden- 
tical with  those  of  higher  apes.  The  Neapolitans  talk  not  only 
with  their  hands  but  with  their  faces,  and  Mallery^^  says  there  is 
excuse  for  believing  that  the  revolt  called  the  Sicilian  Vesper.* 
was  arranged  throughout  the  island  without  the  use  of  a  syllable, 
and  even  the  day  and  hour  for  the  massacre  of  the  obnoxious  for- 
eigners was  fixed  upon  by  facial  expression,  without  even  manual 
signs.  Some  of  the  common  signs  Taylor  cites  as  used  in  Naples 
are  waving  the  hand  to  indicate  folly,  finger  and  thumb  rubbed 
together  mean  money,  squinting  signifies  a  cheat,  finger  to  mouth 
means  silence,  wiping  perspiration  from  forehead  expresses  fa- 
tigue. Taylor  speaks  of  King  Ferdinand  returning  to  Naples 
after  the  revolt  of  182 1  and  finding  that  the  boisterous  people 
would  not  allow  him  to  be  heard  resorted  successfully  to  a  royal 
address  in  signs,  giving  reproaches,  threats,  admonitions,  pardon 
and  dismissal  to  the  entire  satisfaction  of  the  assembled  multitude. 
The  history  of  the  Sicilian  gesture  is  also  given  by  Taylor  who 
says  that  the  Sicinians  being  its  aborigines  Sicily  was  colonized 
by  the  Greeks  in  separate  bands  who  had  different  dialects,  which 
became  further  unlike  as  time  passed,  the  oligarchies  or  tyrants 
warring  with  one  another  until  the  fifth  century,  when  Carthage 
added  to  the  mixture,  followed  by  Roman,  Vandal,  Gothic,  Heru- 

"  Report  of  Bureau  of  Ethnology,  1879  to  1880,  p.  269. 
"  Ibid,  p.  296. 


220  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Han,  Arab  and  Norman  subjugation.  As  dialects  multiply  so  do 
gestures  and  they  decrease  together  as  the  necessity  for  signs 
depart  with  a  more  general  language.  Addison  in  the  London 
Spectator  contended  against  gestures  in  public  speaking  and  the 
English  repress  movements  of  the  kind  even  in  conversation  while 
many  other  people  resort  to  even  violent  and  unnecessary  motion 
while  talking. 

The  dog  gesticulates  in  his  fawning  to  show  submissiveness, 
and  turns  on  his  back  to  tell  the  big  dog  that  he  is  helpless  in  his 
presence.  He  jumps  and  springs  to  attract  attention  and  to  show 
joy,  and  pulls  clothing  to  draw  a  person  away.  Deaf-mutes  re- 
;sort  to  expressive  motions  and  cultivate  a  sign  language  and  when 
disease  of  the  brain  interferes  with  speech  the  patients  sometimes 
resort  to  motions  to  convey  meaning. 

Gesture  language  is  essentially  the  same  all  over  the  world, 
■nor  does  it  depend  upon  poverty  of  language  for  the  Neapolitan 
is  the  richest  dialect  of  the  Italian  group.  Mallery  quotes  Clark 
as  saying  that  Indians  of  different  tribes  had  been  married  for 
years  and  had  never  learned  a  word  of  each  other's  language, 
their  communications  being  by  signs  entirely.  The  plan  of 
thought  in  sign  language  suggests  primitive  speech,  especially 
isolating  languages.  Articles,  conjunctions  and  prepositions  are 
omitted  in  sign  language  and  adjectives  follow  the  verbs.  All 
verbs  are  given  in  the  present  tense,  and  both  nouns  and  verbs 
appear  only  in  the  singular  number,  the  idea  of  plurality  being 
expressed  by  some  other  way.  Abbreviations  are  constantly  prac- 
ticed. To  illustrate  this,  Capt.  Clark  gives  the  following  imagin- 
ary speech:  *'I  arrived  here  today  to  make  a  treaty.  I  have 
with  me  one  hundred  lodges  which  are  camped  beyond  the  Black 
Hills  near  the  Yellowstone  River.  Take  pity  on  me  for  I  am  poor 
and  I  have  five  children  who  are  sick  and  without  food.  The 
snow  is  deep  and  the  weather  is  very  cold."  The  signs  used  to 
convey  this  would  be  those  for  the  following  words :  *'I-arrive- 
today  -  make  -  treaty  -  my  -  loo  -  lodge  -  camp  -  beyond  -  Hills  - 
Black  -  River  -  Elk  -  you  -  chief  -  great  -  to  pity  -  I  -  poor  -  my  - 
5  -  child  -  sick  -  food  -  wiped  out  -  snow  -  deep  -  cold  -  strong." 

The  well  known  story  of  a  dog  who  brought  another  dog  with 
a  broken  leg  to  the  surgeon  who  had  cured  his  leg  when  broken 


LANGUAGF.  221 


plainly  proves  that  in  some  way  he  had  told  his  friend  what  the 
surgeon  could  do  for  him. 

A.  Graham  Bell,  the  telephone  inventor,  is  accredited  by  Gar-^ 
rick  Mallery^^  with  having  taught  an  English  terrier  to  say  dis- 
tinctly, "How  are  you  Grandmamma?"  Of  course  the  dog  was 
unable  to  attach  any  meaning  to  the  words,  but  other  dogs  have 
shown  by  their  acts  that  they  understood  many  things  said  to- 
them,  and  it  is  often  told  of  old  house  dogs  that  they  disap- 
peared when  there  is  talk,  in  their  presence,  of  destroying  them. 

Sometimes  gesture  language  consists  in  pointing  out  the  ob- 
ject thought  of  or  picturing  it  in  the  air.  An  universal  method 
of  indicating  a  day  is  to  point  to  the  course  of  the  sun  in  the  sky 
by  a  wave  of  the  hand  from  one  horizon  to  the  other. 

Laura  Bridgman  was  a  deaf-mute  and  blind  pupil  of  Dr. 
Howe  of  Boston,  and  could  only  be  communicated  with  by  finger 
motions,  that  she  felt,  and  that  she  thought  in  these  terms  alone 
was  evident  in  her  moving  her  fingers  as  though  she  were  con- 
versing when  she  was  dreaming.  Dogs  also  move  their  limbs  and 
bark  in  their  dreams. 

The  inimitable  work  of  Darwin  on  Expression  of  the  Emo- 
tions in  Man  and  Animals  affords  many  facts  which  can  with 
advantage  be  referred  to  in  this  matter  of  language  in  general. 
Practically  when  mental  states  are  outwardly  expressed  by  move- 
ments of  any  part  of  the  body  such  movements  may  be  regarded 
as  gestures,  and  it  matters  nothing  whether  the  will  is  or  is  not 
concerned,  such  gestures  serve  as  communication,  to  others, 
though  at  times  that  may  not  be  intended. 

Under  three  main  principles  Darwin  groups  this  sort  of  lan- 
guage: I.  The  principle  of  serviceable  associated  habit.  That 
is,  when  certain  movements  of  the  body  have  proven  to  be  service- 
able, the  movements  tend  to  be  repeated  whenever  the  mind  re- 
calls these  movements,  though  there  may  be  no  use  in  doing  so. 
Certain  states  of  mind  are  thus  associated  with  habits  of  move- 
ments and  the  muscles  concerned  in  the  movement  contract  more 
or  less  according  to  the  will  power  exerted  in  the  suppression  of 
expression,  and  sometimes  checking  one  habitual  motion  requires 

"  Ibid,  p.  275. 


222  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Other  slight  movements,  and  these  also  are  expressive.     Muscles 
that  are  the  least  controlled  by  the  will  are  most  liable  to  act. 

2.  The  principle  of  antithesis :  Certain  mental  states  leading 
to  certain  habitual  acts  and  an  opposite  state  of  mind  occurring 
there  is  a  strong  tendency  to  use  motions  that  are  the  opposite 
of  those  induced  by  the  first  principle. 

3.  Nerve  currents  may  cause  movements  other  than  habitual 
or  voluntary  ones. 

We  can  group  all  expressions  under  these  three  heads : 
When  expulsive  efforts  are  made  the  muscles  around  the  eye 
contract  to  protect  the  blood  vessels  from  rupture  in  the  delicate 
structures  there.  This  is  serviceable  but  the  eye  may  be  shut 
sometimes  to  denote  a  mental  state  associated  with  the  impulse 
to  close  it^from  harm.  Fear  when  strong  expresses  itself  in  cries, 
in  efforts  to  hide  or  escape,  in  palpitations  and  tremblings.  The 
destructive  passions  are  shown  in  tension  of  muscles,  gnashing  of 
teeth,  protruded  claws,  dilated  eyes  and  nostrils,  and  in  growls 
and  these  are  the  motions  of  killing  prey.  Laughter,  Spencer  re- 
gards as  due  to  an  overflow  of  nerve  force,  but  its  origin  in  my 
opinion  is  in  the  eating  motions. ^^  A  dog  expresses  his  love  and 
humility  by  drooping  ears,  hanging  lips,  flexible  body  and  wag- 
ging tail.  With  mankind  bristling  of  hair,  uncovering  of  teeth, 
point  to  man  having  existed  in  a  much  lower  and  animal-like 
condition.  Monkeys  and  men  use  the  same  muscles  in  laughter. 
Habit  increases  the  conducting  power  of  nerve  fibres  with  fre- 
quency of  excitement.  Muscles  also  grow  in  size  with  use  .and 
the  apparatus  of  motion,  sensation  and  thinking  become  similarly 
stronger  with  exercise.  Inheritance  and  habit  together  may  not 
only  fix  but  intensify  certain  acts  such  as  ambling  and  cantering 
of  horses,  which  may  not  be  natural  to  them,  also  in  the  pointing 
and  setting  of  dogs  and  peculiar  flight  of  certain  pigeons.  In 
men  there  can  be  certain  tricks  of  gesture  also  transmitted.  Men 
learn  to  put  on  gloves  and  wind  their  watches  unconsciously, 
they  may  fair  to  remember  when  they  did  so,  but  at  first  these 
acts  are  learned  by  attention.  Even  piano  playing  may  be  done 
while  asleep,  by  one  who  has  studied  the  method  previously  until 
able  to  play  unconsciously.  A  rustic  often  scratches  his  head 
"  Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology,  1884. 


LANGUAGE.  223 

from  habit  when  perplexed,  as  if  he  felt  an  uncomfortable  sen- 
sation. Another  rubs  his  eyes  or  coughs  when  embarassed.  One 
who  rejects  a  proposition  shuts  his  eyes  or  turns  away  his  face, 
but  if  he  accepts  he  will  nod  his  head  and  open  his  eyes  widely. 
Persons  describing  a  horrid  sight  shut  their  eyes  or  shake  their 
heads  as  though  to  escape  something  disagreeable.  In  looking 
suddenly  at  any  object  the  eyes  may  be  quickly  and  widely  opened 
and  in  trying  to  remember  you  may  raise  your  eyebrows  as  if  try- 
ing to  see  better,  and  in  recalling  a  name  may  glance  at  various 
parts  of  the  room  as  though  you  expected  the  name  to  appear  to 
your  eyesight. 

Cutting  with  scissors  and  learning  to  write  may  be  associated 
with  absurd  tongue  motions.  When  a  public  singer  or  speaker 
becomes  hoarse  you  may  hear  a  number  of  persons  clearing  their 
throats  sympathetically.  At  leaping  matches  some  spectators 
move  their  feet,  and  in  watching  various  performances  children 
and  a  few  adults  sometimes  unconsciously  imitate  the  movement 
they  are  watching.  Reflex  acts  such  as  sneezing,  coughing  and 
breathing  are  to  some  extent  concerned  in  expression.  There  is 
involuntary  closure  of  the  eyelids  when  the  eyeball  is  threatened. 
A  wink.  Associated  serviceable  habitual  movements  in  the  lower 
animals  are  cited  to  show  that  movements  originally  performed 
for  a  purpose  are  still  used  from  habit  even  though  ceasing  to  be 
useful.  Dogs  when  they  wish  to  lie  down  turn  round  and  round 
and  scratch  the  ground  in  a  senseless  manner,  as  if  they  intended 
to  trample  down  the  grass  and  scoop  out  a  hollow  as  their  wild 
parents  did  in  the  woods  or  plains.  Jackals  do  this  but  wolves 
do  not.  A  half  idiotic  dog  was  observed  to  turn  round  thirteen 
times  before  going  to  sleep.  Dogs  crouch  in  approaching  one 
another  as  their  wild  ancestors  did  in  nearing  their  prey.  Dogs, 
wolves  and  jackals  scratch  backward,  even  on  a  smooth  surface, 
but  if  this  motion  was  ever  serviceable  in  their  ancestory  it  has 
degenerated  into  a  mere  ceremony,  looking  like  a  superstitious 
observance.  Cats,  wolves,  jackals  and  foxe^  cover  up  superflu- 
ous food  and  in  these  motions  we  have  a  useless  remnant  of  habit- 
ual movements  originally  followed  by  some  progenitor  of  the  dog 
genus  and  retained  for  a  prodigious  length  of  time.  Horses  paw 
the  ground  when  eager  to  start  and  also  when  about  tt)  be  fed 


224  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

corn  or  oats.  Cats  may  shake  their  feet  when  they  hear  water 
poured  as  they  do  when  their  feet  are  wet.  An  habitual  move- 
ment excited  by  an  associated  sound  instead  of  touch.  From 
these  and  other  instances  Darwin  concludes  that  in  accordance 
with  the  first  principle  when  any  sensation,  desire,  dislike,  etc., 
has  led  during  a  long  series  of  generations  to  some  voluntary 
movement  then  a  tendency  to  the  performance  of  a  similar  move- 
ment will  almost  certainly  be  excited  whenever  the  same  or  anal- 
ogous or  associated  sensation,  although  very  weak,  may  be  ex- 
cited or  experienced,  notwithstanding  that  the  movements  in  this 
case  may  not  be  of  the  least  use.  Such  habitual  movements  are 
often  or  are  generally  inherited,  and  they  then  differ  but  little 
from  the  reflex  actions.  The  principle  of  Antithesis  is  repre- 
sented in  the  dog  when  angry  holding  himself  stiff  and  straight 
and  with  erect  hair,  and  when  fawning  on  his  master  the  very 
opposite  condition  is  assumed,  he  becomes  curved  and  wiggles 
up  and  down  and  from  side  to  side.  The  cat  crouches  with  ears 
drawn  back  and  tail  swinging  when  angry,  with  back  curved 
and  hair  bristled,  but  when  pleased  the  back  is  arched  and  tail  is 
erect  and  puss  rubs  herself  leaning  against  your  leg.  All  these 
movements  characterize  every  species  and  variety  of  the  dog  and 
cat  families.  Dogs  show  instantaneous  change  between  pleasure 
and  dejection  and  are  often  distracted  between  contending  de- 
sires. Dogs  in  play  pretend  to  fight  and  bite  but  are  careful  not 
to  do  harm.  The  motion  to  be  gone  is  an  associated  gesture  and 
its  antithesis  is  the  pull  toward  you,  and  these  kinds  of  antithe- 
tical gestures  are  inherited.  Children  are  more  apt  to  have  con- 
vulsions than  to  tremble  and  among  adults  trembling  is  caused 
by  cold,  during  blood  poisoning,  delirium  tremens,  old  age,  ex- 
haustion, pain,  fear  and  occasionally  anger  and  joy.  Music  may 
produce  a  shiver  down  the  back.  Strong  excitement  of  the  nerv- 
ous system  interrupting  a  steady  flow  of  nerve  force  to  the  mus- 
cles accounts  for  trembling.  Strong  emotions  affecting  various 
organs  show  similar  outflow  of  energy.  The  heart  is  particularly 
sensitive  to  stimulation  either  physical  or  mental;  and  the  vaso- 
motor system  regulating  blushing  and  pallor  is  also  responsive 
unless  habit  has  regulated  or  checked  such  exhibitions  of  emotion. 
The  flufling  of  feathers  and  the  swelling  out  of  some  animals 


LANGUAGE.  225 

is  to  appear  as  formidable  as  possible  and  to  frighten  enemies, 
and  for  this  purpose  many  sounds  are  used,  but  the  drawing  back 
and  the  pressure  of  the  ears  close  to  the  head  is  to  keep  them 
from  being  bitten.  Showing  the  teeth,  especially  the  canine,  is 
useful  as  a  threat  and  survives  in  man  in  his  sneer.  Nodding 
and  shaking  the  head  is  presumed  to  have  originated  in  accepting 
and  rejecting  food. 

The  wide  opening  of  the  eyes  in  fear  and  surprise  is  service- 
able so  as  to  see  as  quickly  as  possible  all  around  us  and  the  ears 
may  involuntarily  be  pricked  up  to  enable  us  to  hear  better,  for 
we  have  habitually  prepared  ourselves  thus  to  discover  and  en- 
counter danger.  Headlong  flight  or  struggle  is  prepared  for  by 
rapid  heart  action,  dilated  nostrils  and  heaving  chest  and  the  ex- 
haustion may  follow  such  preparatory  conditions  though  the  ex- 
ercise was  not  taken,  through  the  force  of  inheritance  and  asso- 
ciation. 

Oppressed  breathing  is  associated  with  horror  and  the  feel- 
ing of  relief  is  expressed  by  a  deep  drawn  breath,  and  sighing 
could  express  the  attempt  to  physically  relieve  a  mentally  unpleas- 
ant feeling.  All  such  expressions  and  vastly  more  are  inter- 
preted by  beholders  more  or  less  correctly  and  are  therefore  clas- 
sified as  signs,  gestures,  hieroglyphics  of  conditions  that  may  be 
read  and  understood,  hence  they  are  to  some  extent  symbolic 
language  and  indeed  when  these  motions  are  voluntarily  per- 
formed they  can  be  made  to  convey  ideas  of  fear,  disgust,  pleas- 
ure, etc.,  as  effectually  as  writing  or  speech. 

That  facial  expression  is  an  underestimated  part  of  conver- 
sation observe  how  closely  some  watch  each  others  faces  to  tell 
whether  the  speaker  is  in  earnest  and  to  learn  meanings  from 
the  expression  as  well  as  from  the  words.  Speaking  in  the  dark 
loses  much  of  the  help  of  face  appearance  and  other  movements 
as  accessories  to  speech. 

Wyllie  gives  a  diagram  of  development  of  speech  in  the 
child.  The  first  year  tears  and  crying  are  the  main  emotional 
expressions,  while  grunting,  laughing  and  smiling  increase  with 
facial  expression  and  gestures,  babbling  and  crowing.  The  sec- 
ond year  crying  decreases  and  grunting  ceases,  babbling  and  cry- 
ing grow  less,  and  words  are  freely  invented,  mimicry  and  echo- 


226  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

lalia  grow  and  the  understanding  of  spoken  words  increases. 
The  third  year  crying  is  much  less,  laughing,  smiling,  facial  ex- 
pression, gestures  are  more  frequent,  the  understanding  of  words 
spoken  increases  and  intelligent  speech  production  which  begins 
usually  about  the  middle  of  the  second  year  has  now  greatly  im- 
proved. Words  are  less  invented  at  this  age  than  earlier ;  babb- 
ling, crowing  cease,  mimic  acting  and  echolalia  decrease.  So  at 
first  there  predominates  inarticulate  sounds,  next  facial  and  other 
gestures,  then  babbling,  crowing,  then  intelligent  speech. 

W.  H.  Bates^"*  says  that  seven  or  eight  languages  may  be 
spoken  within  two  hundred  miles  of  the  river  by  Brazilian  tribes. 
Indian  languages  may  become  quickly  corrupted  by  their  tendency 
to  invent  slang  which  amuses  them  and  may  be  adopted.  A  few 
years  of  separation  of  parts  of  tribes  render  their  languages 
unlike. 

A  child  says  "I  corned,"  "I  goed,"  "badder,"  "baddest."  Chil- 
dren conjugate  irregular  verbs  in  a  regular  manner. 

The  remarkable  peculiarity  has  been  observed  in  several 
widely  separate  peoples,  as  in  the  Carribean  Sea  and  in  Green- 
land, of  a  language  spoken  only  by  the  males  and  another  lan- 
guage by  the  females  of  a  tribe.  This  strange  custom  is  ac- 
counted for  by  Hervas^^  quoted  by  Max  Miiller^^  who  says  that 
"the  Carib  women  of  the  Antilles  spoke  a  language  different  from 
their  husbands  because  the  Caribs  had  killed  the  whole  male 
population  of  the  Avawakes  and  married  their  women,  and  some- 
thing similar  seems  to  have  taken  place  among  some  of  the  tribes 
of  Greenland." 

W.  D.  Whitney  remarked  that  spoken  language  began  when 
a  cry  of  pain  was  imitated  to  indicate  that  *'I  am  suffering,"  and 
when  an  angry  growl,  the  direct  expression  of  passion,  was  re- 
produced to  signify  disapprobation,  threatening,  and  the  like. 

Wilhelm  von  Humbolt  clearly  laid  down  the  principle  that 
copious  vocabularies  are  not  a  proof  of  excellence  any  more  than 
a  copious  gabbling  is  proof  of  intellect.  In  Tierra  del  Fuego 
there  are  vast  numbers  of  words  to  express  silly  differences  of 

"  The  Naturalist  on  the  Amazon. 
^^  Hervas,  Catologo,  I,  p.  369. 
"  Science  of  Language,  p.  48. 


LANGUAGE. 


227 


one  idea  and  the  Eskimo  have  twenty  words  to  signify  fishing 
for  particular  kinds  of  animals  but  have  no  word  "to  fish''  in 
general.  Regularity  of  structure  or  abundance  of  grammatical 
forms  does  not  confer  high  rank  on  a  language  for  both  traits 
are  common  in  low  degenerate  tongues.  Regular  verbs  with 
one  conjugation  indicate  isolation  and  poverty  of  ideas  because 
other  people  have  transmitted  nothing  through  contact.  Irregular 
verbs  come  from  assimilation  with  other  tongues. 

Language  being  a  natural  faculty  is  capable  of  constant  im- 
provement and  has  advanced  steadily.  Slang  sometimes  survives 
when  all  else  perished  in  a  language  and  by  dropping  the  unneces- 
sary the  necessary  survives.  Chinese  is  fixed  and  decaying  while 
English  is  growing,  absorbing,  living. 

Max  Miiller^^  says  that  "As  soon  as  man  began  to  observe, 
to  name  and  to  know  the  movements  and  changes  in  the  world 
around  him,  he  suspected  that  there  was  something  behind  what 
he  saw,  that  there  must  be  an  agent  for  every  action,  a  mover 
for  every  movement.  Instead  of  saying  and  thinking  as  we  do 
today,  the  rain,  the  thunder,  the  moon,  he  said  the  thunderer,  the 
rainer,  the  measurer,  he  rains,  he  thunders,  without  caring  as 
yet  as  to  who  he  might  be.  His  earliest  concepts  consisted  in  the 
consciousness  of  his  own  repeated  acts.  The  act  and  the  actor, 
the  movement  and  the  mover  were  expressed  by  the  same  word. 
All  such  words  as  oration,  pension,  picture,  were  names  of  acts 
before  they  became  names  of  objects.  After  a  time  no  doubt  the 
human  mind  accustomed  itself  to  look  upon  the  actions  as  inde- 
pendent of  the  agents,  the  cutter  became  a  ship,  the  cutting  be- 
came a  slice,  the  writing  became  a  book.  But  the  chain  from 
the  active  root  to  the  passive  nouns  was  never  broken  and  every 
link  is  there  to  attest  the  continuous  progress  of  human  language 
and  thought.  The  most  prominent  phenomena  of  nature  were 
named  by  the  Aryas  as  in  the  instance  of  naming  the  storm 
wind  'the  smasher'  Mar-ut,  the  smasher,  from  Mar  to  smash, 
indicating  the  god  of  the  storm  wind  as  the  one  who  smashes." 

The  same  process  of  naming  the  most  prominent  phenomena 
of  nature  led  in  the  end  to  a  complete  physical  pantheon.  Not 
only  trees,  mountains  and  rivers  were  named  as  agents  but  the 
"  Anthropological  Religion,  Lecture  III,  p.  71. 


228  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

sea  and  the  earth,  the  fire,  wind,  sky,  stars,  sun,  dawn,  moon,  day 
and  night  were  all  represented  under  different  names  as  agents. 
When  no  others  than  human  agents  were  known  other  agents 
were  conceived  as  like  human  agents.  Next  the  agent  or  power 
was  spoken  of  as  more  than  human,  superhuman.  Then  came  a 
recognitipn  of  the  animate  from  inanimate.  There  was  supposed 
to  be  a  power  behind  actions.  The  history  of  the  word  deva  in 
Sanskrit,  and  deus  in  Latin  explains  the  conception  of  deity 
among  the  Aryan  ancestors  better  than  anything.  The  highest 
generalizations  were  that  there  was  but  one  god. 

Silly  words  to  emotional  songs  are  popular  as  the  intelligence 
is  not  bothered  with  trying  to  get  at  any  meaning.  Songs  which 
are  outbursts  of  feeling  are  more  sure  to  elicit  response  of  the 
audience  than  when  intelligible  words  are  used.  So  the  prima- 
donna  whose  language  is  not  known  by  the  audience  is  most  pop- 
ular, according  to  Noire.  The  chants  of  rude  nations  are  inar- 
ticulate words.  Indians  in  America  accompany  their  dances 
with  Hi-ya — Hi-ya,  monotonously  repeated  to  a  limited  range 
of  notes.  There  is  no  more  meaning  to  such  words  than  there 
is  to  baby  talk. 

Tyler  says  that  in  South  America  a  bird  with  a  large  nose 
was  called  the  tou-can,  or  big  beak,  and  the  name  was  also  trans- 
ferred to  Indians  who  had  big  noses,  and  in  this  way  words  may 
grow  and  change  in  use.  Our  word  aquiline  is  used  to  mean  a 
curved  nose  like  that  of  the  eagle. 

Hammer  was  in  the  old  German  hamar,  which  in  Sanscrit 
means  stone,  and  stone  hammers  were  the  first  to  be  used.  A 
surprisingly  direct  proof  of  the  Aryan  derivation  of  English  and 
German. 

The  roots  from  which  most  words  are  constructed  are  not 
numerous.  There  are  less  than  two  thousand  in  Sanscrit,  only 
five  hundred  in  Hebrew  and  four  hundred  and  fifty  in  Chinese, 
and  still  less  in  some  other  languages. ^^  Sir  John  Lubbock 
found  pa  and  ma  primitive  and  universal.  The  devices  for  in- 
creasing the  power  and  range  of  language  consist  in  intonation, 
reduplication,  combining  old  words  and  making  new  words.  Ta 
has  twenty-six  different  meanings  in  Chinese  and  hence  the 
^**  Max  Miiller,  ibid. 


LANGUAGE.  229 

chance  that  it  will  coincide  with  some  meaning  of  the  sound  of 
ta  in  other  languages  is  twenty-six  times  greater  than  with  many 
other  words. 

Max  Miiller  grudgingly  admits  the  truth  of  onomatopoeia, 
which  he  dubbed  formerly  the  bow-wow  theory,  these  natural 
sounds  suggesting  the  names  that  are  readily  recognized,  such 
as  bow-wow,  cackle,  cluck,  gobble,  quack,  caw,  croak,  neigh, 
whinny,  bray,  bark,  yelp,  howl,  snarl,  purr,  mew,  grunt,  roar, 
bellow,  low,  bleat,  chirp,  chatter.  The  hog  was  named  from  the 
imitation  of  the  sound  the  animal  made.  The  English  cock  is  a 
contraction  ,of  cock-a-doodle-doo.  The  English  owl  is  Eule  in 
German,  ulula  in  Latin,  ulu  in  Hindu  and  mulek  in  Egyptian. 

Words  that  imitate  the  sounds  of  nature  are  classed  as  onoma- 
topoetic,  as  when  a  bird  or  other  animal  is  named  by  imitating  its 
cry,  as  hawk  represents  not  only  the  noise  this  chicken  thief  makes 
hut  the  name  of  the  chicken's  shriek  to  announce  its  approach.  So 
hens  and  people  name  the  hawk  alike.  Other  natural  sounds  are 
those  of  the  wind,  the  roaring  of  the  waterfall,  drip  and  patter  of 
the  rain  and  from  the  sounds  made  the  names  become  associated. 
These  sounds  do  not  impress  the  senses  of  all  alike  but  sometimes 
so  nearly  so  that  they  are  suspected  of  having  been  borrowed 
from  other  languages  when  they  originated  separately  as  coinci- 
dences. 

Calling  the  sheep  "ba,"  and  naming  the  dog  from  his  bark 
was  called  the  bow-wow  theory  by  Max  Miiller  and  while  he  was 
right  as  rejecting  it  as  an  explanation  of  all  naming  of  objects, 
he  went  too  far  in  rejecting  it  altogether,  and  compromised  by 
adopting  the  onomatopoetic  theory  which  means  the  same  thing. 
Deriving  language  from  interjection,  the  necessity  for  exclaiming 
or  giving  vent  to  emotion  by  sounds,  such  as  neighing,  crowing, 
roaring,  Muller  calls  the  ''pooh-pooh"  theory.  Miiller's  own 
theory  was  that  every  being  was  created  with  a  ^typical  sound  to 
enable  man  to  have  a  copious  phonetic  world.  This  was  in  accord 
with  the  old  fashioned  idea  that  every  thing  was  made  with  a 
definite  purpose  and  Miiller's  critics  called  his  notion  the  "ding- 
dong"  theory.  This  is  part  of  the  notion  that  such  vast  bodies  as 
the  stars  were  created  for  astrological  use  in  determining  the 


230  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

births  and  deaths  of  men,  as  we  can  imagine  the  rat  thinking  that 
the  entire  house  and  cellar  contents  were  made  for  him  only. 

Interjections  such  as  ah,  ha-ha,  hum,  ugh,  tut,  pooh,  are  de- 
rived from  involuntary  expressions.  Bang,  in  imitation  of  the 
bang  of  a  gun,  becomes  a  verb  to  ''bang  the  door."  Slam  is  an- 
other verb  derived  from  the  noise  made.  Children  universally 
try  to  imitate  natural  sounds  and  learn  by  mimicry  of  older  per- 
sons. Several  nations  use  the  word  hist  for  silence.  Hust  and 
whist  and  the  Gaelic  wist  are  also  common.  The  German  has 
pst,  the  Danish  tys,  Swedish  tyst,  French,  chut,  Italian  zitto.  The 
English  use  mum  as  a  caution  that  the  mouth  should  be  closed. 
Sh  is  said  with  lifted  finger.  Delight  is  indicated  by  smacking 
the  lips,  or  rubbing  the  belly,  and  Mallery  speaks  of  the  slang 
yum-yum  being  used  to  denote  fondness,  and  the  Papuans  call 
eating  nam-nam.  Such  words  as  biting,  gnawing,  grinning, 
smearing,  belong  to  the  second  stage  of  language  evolution  and 
are  not  starting  points. 

The  natural  expressions  of  the  emotions,  the  inarticulate 
cries  of  pain  or  pleasure,  fright,  suspicion  or  admiration  are  not 
exactly  the  same  in  all  languages,  but  being  often  based  upon 
similar  vowel  sounds  the  articulate  words  from  them  are  liable 
to  be  nearly  alike.  'The  ah  sound,  also,  prevails  in  such  often 
used  words  as  papa,  mamma,  father,  which  are  quite  similar  in 
different  languages.  But  there  are  also  mere  coincidences  which 
other  things  prove  to  be  such  and  that  there  were  no  associations 
of  languages  in  such  cases  as  when  the  Maya  Indians  of  Yucatan 
used  the  word  hoi  for  our  hole,  poll  for  head  and  even  battel  for 
battle.    These  are  all  assumed  to  be  accidental. 

As  resemblances  were  constantly  being  seen  where  they  did 
not  exist  and  as  differences  were  also  mistaken  where  resem- 
blances should  have  been  noted,  the  naming  process  of  applying  a 
term  for  a  group  of  similar  objects  was  a  confused  one,  such  as 
calling  all  trees  firs,  and  some  trees  oaks,  and  finally  mistaking 
oaks  for  firs  until  in  some  places  such  changed  names  exist  today. 
Time  and  cutting  off  changed  many  words  by  survival  of  the 
fittest  word  to  exist,  which  was  often  far  from  being  the  best, 
as  in  other  instances  of  natural  selection.  The  essence  of  lan- 
guage says  Wedgwood,  is  a  system  of  vocal  signs.    The  mental 


LANGUAGE.  23I 

process  of  speech  is  the  same  as  by  gestures  such  as  the  deaf 
and  dumb  employ.  A  nod  or  the  shake  of  the  head  is  the  same  as 
yes  and  no.  The  gesture  is  addressed  to  sight  and  the  words  to 
hearing.  Deaf  persons  are  mutes  if  they  have  never  heard  speech, 
.  those  who  have  become  deaf  after  having  previously  spoken  pre- 
serve their  speaking  faculty  but  fail  to  modulate  their  voices  cor- 
rectly. The  case  of  Casper  Hauser  is  cited  to  show  that  even  when 
hearing  and  intellect  are  intact  speech  may  not  develop  when  it  is 
not  permitted  to  be  heard.  Noire's^®  conception  is  that  man,  like 
the  ape  and  others,  very  early  acquired  a  language  of  gestures  or 
attitude,  and  of  gestures  accompanied  by  sounds.  Savages  accom- 
pany their  speech  with  gestures.  Noire  notes  three  kinds  of 
sounds  such  as:  i.  Calls  of  allurement  or  summons.  2.  War 
cries  to  dismay  and  to  assemble.  3.  Warning  calls  among  social 
animals.    In  these  are  the  subsoil  of  human  speech. 

Human  speech  was  a  series  of  cries,  each  a  sentence  in  itself 
without  syntax  and  limited  to  the  simplest  of  animal  wants.  They 
are  not  the  same  in  all  languages  nor  are  they  numerous,  but  by 
a  series  of  remarkable  devices,  which  are  never  the  same  in  two 
different  tongues,  nations  have  built  upon  these  roots  all  the 
structure  of  vocal  expression  whether  stately  or  cumbrous. 
Words  may  have  different  meanings  in  different  tribes  and  words 
may  be  borrowed  from  another  race,  retaining  or  altering  their 
original  sense.  In  English  the  borrowed  words  are  from  the 
widest  different  sources  and  make  up  the  bulk  of  the  language. 
Languages  are  constantly  altering,  whatever  the  status  of  the 
people,  either  by  advance  or  degeneration.  Onh^  dead  languages 
stand  still. 

Hutson-^  says  that  speech  began  m  the  necessities  and  gratifi- 
cation of  man's  association  with  his  fellow  man.  No  doubt  by  far 
the  original  vocabulary  found  in  any  family  or  tribe  sprang  di- 
rectly from  mimicry  of  natural  sounds  heard  from  the  immediate 
environment.  Hence  there  is  a  measure  of  truth  in  all  the  theo- 
ries in  the  part  origin  of  speech  being  based  on  sound.  There  is 
sense  in  what  has  been  ridiculed  as  the  "ding-dong"  theory,  also 

"  Die  Welt  als  Entwickelung  des  Geistes,  Ludwig  Noire,  Ch.  IX,  part  III, 

Leipsic. 
'"Charles  Woodward  Hutson,  The  Story  of  Language,  1897. 


/ 

232  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

in  the  "pooh  pooh"  theory.  The  ring  of  metals,  the  clash  of 
weapons,  the  cry  of  animals,  the  song  of  birds,  the  whistling  of 
the  wind,  the  spontaneous  ejaculation  of  man  himself  had  all 
their  share  in  the  formation  of  primitive  languages. 

Among  animals  we  note  the  sign,  the  sound  and  the  intonation . 
or  louder  sound.  These  have  developed  into  human  gestures, 
human  speech  and  human  emphasis.  In  the  Chinese  language 
intonation  is  as  important  as  mere  sound.  Mimicry  is  unques- 
tionably the  primary  basis  on  which  all  these  modes  are  formed, 
and  diversity  of  surroundings  and  anatomical  differences  make 
language  diversity.  According  to  Henry  Drummond,  language 
consists  in  six  elements. 

1.  Emotional  exclamation  or  gesture  sounds. 

2.  Imitative  sounds. 

3.  Conventional  symbolic  sounds. 

4.  Varied  combinations  of  these  in  articulate  spe.ech. 

5.  Figurative  use  of  concrete  terms  to  express  abstract  ideas 
and, 

6.  Grammatical  corrections,  late  in  development. 

The  first  sounds  were  probably  made  up  of  the  closest  con- 
sonants and  most  open  vowels  and  confined  to  merely  physical 
concepts.  All  intellectual  and  moral  ideas  found  expression  by 
means  of  the  figurative  use  of  words  that  had  originally  a  phys- 
ical meaning  only. 

The  necessity  of  communication  originated  language.  It  also 
facilitates  thought,  but  this  had  little  to  do  with  its  origin.  Diplo- 
mats claim  that  by  means  of  language  they  are  as  often  enabled 
to  conceal  thought  as  well  as  to  communicate  it. 

Food,  drink,  shelter,  protection  against  dangerous  animals, 
and  the  care  of  helpless  offspring  were  man's  first  needs.  For 
these  intercourse  and  community  of  action  were  needed.  Ges- 
ture, posture,  grimace  and  utterance  were  necessarily  the  earliest 
modes  of  communication  and  probably  long  continued  in  use  to- 
gether, and  still  are  used  with  other  modes.  There  are  said  to 
be  tribes  that  cannot  understand  one  another's  language  in  the 
dark.  Cries,  exclamations,  and  imitations  of  the  sounds  in  nature 
must  have  made  up  the  first  modes  of  utterance.  These  would 
soon  become  fixed  in  meaning  and  make  the  beginning  of  speech. 


LANGUAGE.  233 

The  Aryan  tongues  have  been  traced  back  to  roots  of  one  syl- 
lable. The  Chinese  and  some  other  tongues  still  consist  of  such 
roots. 

As  among  the  Ponca  and  other  tribes  of  Indians,  there  is  a 
tendency  to  multiply  uselessly  such  things  as  a  verb  that  would 
denote  whether  game  were  killed  accidentally  or  purposely,  by 
shooting  or  otherwise,  and  whether  by  bow  and  arrow  or  gun  ;  the 
form  of  the  verb  would  also  express  the  person,  number,  gender 
and  case  of  the  object.  This  gives  a  clew  to  the  crude  origin  of 
speech  in  making  a  word  that  was  used  upon  one  occasion  that 
would  exactly  express  the  whole  of  a  certain  event.  As  exactly 
the  same  kind  of  event  might  happen  but  once  in  a  million  times, 
there  would  be  a  useless  cumbering  of  the  memory  in  the  storing 
up  of  such  words.  Advance  would  consist  in  inventing  words 
that  would  avoid  all  this  difficulty. 

Savages  invent  names  for  not  only  near  but  distant  relations 
such  as  the  cousin  of  the  wife's  mother's  aunt,  often  a  single 
word  is  sought  for  to  express  such  relationship,  and  with  the 
inevitable  result  of  overcharging  the  memory  with  useless  terms. 
This  is  paralleled  by  their  inclination  to  give  separate  names  to 
multitudes  of  acts  that  are  nearly  alike,  hence  their  jargons  have 
to  undergo  pruning  by  the  natural  selection  of  such  terms  as  can 
be  better  remembered  with  the  additional  grouping  of  names  by 
acts  and  things  that  appear  to  resemble  one  another. 

In  some  tribes  every  river,  tree,  hill,  deed  or  sound  would  be 
named  if  possible,  and  where  rivers,  trees,  hills,  are  scarce  this 
might  be  done,  but  when  a  change  of  location  occurs  to  a  place 
where  trees,  rivers  and  hills  are  many  there  is  likely  to  grow  up 
names  for  groups  of  objects,  the  abstractions  of  ''a  river,"  or  "the 
hill,"  etc.  Children  also  invent  languages  and  then  forget  them, 
and  demented  persons  do  the  same.  "The  Tasmanian  has  no 
general  terms,  the  New  Caledonian  is  unable  to  understand  such 
primary  ideas  as  'tomorrow'  and  'yesterday,'  and  the  speechless 
child  has  not  yet  reached  the  level  of  intelligence  of  the  dog  or 
elephant."^^  Swearing  is  merely  a  survival  of  the  growling  of 
the  beasts  to  intimidate  enemies  or  overcome  prey,  so  that  oaths 
have  an  instinctive  origin  and  the  ability  to  swear,  after  a  brain 

"  Sayce,  The  Primitive  Home  of  the  Aryans. 


234  "^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

injury  has  sometimes  destroyed  all  other  means  of  expression, 
shows  how  deeply  rooted  is  this  growling  or  threatening  pro- 
pensity in  the  organic  structure  of  the  brain. 

Pollock^-  regards  the  first  sound  of  the  infant,  "m-m,"  often 
repeated,  generally  indicates  that  the  child  wants  something. 
''Ba-ba"  repeated  indefinitely  is  a  general  demonstrative  standing 
for  any  object,  as  himself,  another,  and  so  on.  The  expulsive 
labial  "ba"  seems  to  point  out  an  object  with  the  lips^  the  "m-m" 
points  within  as  in  sucking.  In  the  baby  evolution  of  speech 
words  are  first  vaguely  uttered  without  definite  tneaning,  and 
finally  with  definite  meaning  as  "mamma,"  *'papa,"  "dada,"  etc. 

To  illustrate  how  those  of  the  old  metaphysical  school  could 
fail  in  noting  facts  and  drawing  inferences,  Adam  Smith,  Con- 
dillac  and  Locke  say  that  a  child  calls  every  man  papa  or  every 
young  man  "Charley,"  or  something  similar,  hence  proper  names 
were  the  first  names,  and  Liebnitz  says  that  general  terms  were 
the  first  words,  as  children  call  every  person  man,  and  use  fre- 
quently such  words  as  thin,  plant,  animal.  Noire  is  correct  in 
combatting  this  with  the  fact  that  the  child  is  limited  to  a  few 
sounds  and  a  limited  sensory  impression,  neither  special  nor  gen- 
eral names  are  attempted,  but  sounds,  as  with  the  savage,  asso- 
ciated with  a  few  recurring  impressions,  and  whether  they  may 
later  acquire  a  special  or  general  meaning,  as  a  concrete  or  ab- 
stract expression,  the  mere  sound  at  first  attaches  to  a  certain 
recollection  and  subsequently  may  be  made  to  include  only  one 
or  very  many  objects.  As  Noire  puts  it,  the  child's  activity  is  at 
first  one  of  connecting  matters  that  often  occur  with  some  one 
word  that  is  at  his  disposal,  only  later  does  it  learn  to  classify  and 
subdivide,  as  when  it  hears  that  this  is  a  river,  and  that  is  a  river, 
etc.  Language  designated  by  its  first  words  those  objects  that 
were  the  most  striking  and  the  most  interesting  to  man,  and  pro- 
ceeded then  by  the  help  of  those  words  to  generalize,  that  is,  to 
attach  similar  words  to  similar  things.  The  marked  importance 
of  some  object  which  constantly  occurred  in  some  particular  iso- 
lated form  naturally  must  have  led  to  attaching  a  particular  name 
to  the  object,  so  proper  names  belong  to  the  oldest  words  of 
humanity.  The  roots  from  which  the  words  of  today  have  risen 
"  Popular  Science  Monthly,  XIII,  p.  588. 


LANGUAGE.  235 

originally  denoted  definite  acts.  But  considering  the  changes 
constantly  undergone  by  words,  these  roots  need  not  have  the 
same  meaning  as  at  first.  Personal  things  of  frequent  recurrence 
are  fixed  in  words  by  the  child,  transient  acts  make  the  child  cry  or 
laugh  instead  of  speak.  The  names  of  individuals  were  the 
earliest  words,  and  this  is  how  man  is  able  to  fix  the  particular 
and  to  raise  it  to  the  general  concept. 

Germany,  like  France,  has  a  linguistic  division  in  low  German 
in  the  lands  north  of  the  cross  line,  high  German  south  of  it. 
Holland  uses  a  Flemish  form  of  low  German.  Belgium  is  divided 
between  the  Flemish  and  Walloon.  The  German  of  Switzerland 
is  encroached  upon  by  French  and  Italian.  Denmark,  Norway 
and  Sweden  are  peopled  by  Scandinavian  branches  of  the  Ger- 
manic race..  Only  in  the  north  is  the  non-Aryan  race  called  the 
Lapps. 

Latin,  in  the  course  of  time,  changed  into  Italian,  Spanish, 
Portuguese,  Provencal,  French,  Wallachian  and  Roumansch,  and 
Latin  again  with  Greek,  Celtic,  Teutonic  and  Slavonic  languages 
together,  and  with  the  ancient  dialects  of  India  and  Persia  all 
must  have  sprung  from  the  Aryan  or  Indo-European  family  of 
speech. 

Hebrew,  Arabic  and  Syriac  are  but  impressions  of  one  com- 
mon type  of  Semitic  origin.  MijUer  thinks  the  Aryan  and  Semitic 
are  the  only  families  of  speech.  Add  to  these  Turanian  dialects 
of  the  nomad  races  of  Central  and  North  Asia,  the  Tungusic 
Mongolic,  Turkic,  Samoyedic,  and  Finnic,  and  a  convergence  is 
shown  to  one  common  source  according  to  Miiller,  but  other  phil- 
ologists see  support  for  the  polyphyletic  origin  of  languages  in  the 
radical  differences  of  these  families,  the  Aryan,  Semitic  and  Tu- 
ranian. The  Aryan  languages  are  :  I.  Hindu  :  composed  by  the 
dead  Sanscrit,  the  Hindu  and  Cingalese  of  Ceylon ;  II.  Iranian : 
the  dead  Zend  and  the  Persian;  HI.  Celtic:  Welsh,  Irish, 
Gaelic  and  Manx ;  IV.  Italic :  dead  Latin,  Italian,  French,  Span- 
ish, Portuguese ;  V.  Hellenic :  dead  ancient  Greek  and  modern 
Greek ;  YI.  Teutonic :  English,  Dutch,  Frisian,  classed  as  low 
German,  Scandinavian  languages,  Icelandic,  Swedish,  Danish, 
Norwegian,  whlie  modern  German  has  developed  from  the  ancient 


236  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Teutonic ;  VII.  Slavonic  is  divided  into  Russian,  Polish  and  Bo- 
hemian. 

Naus,  a  ship,  is  common  to  both  Sanscrit  and  Greek,  whence 
the  word  nautical.  Equus  in  Latin  is  pronounced  like  aswas  of 
Sanscrit  both  words  meaning  horse. 

The  names  India  and  Hindu  are  from  the  Sanscrit  Sindu 
(river),  the  country  of  the  seven  rivers.  The  Persians  changed 
s  into  h,  as  they  did  in  all  cases,  and  the  word  became  Hindu, 
which  the  Greeks  adopted,  but  dropped  the  h  and  passed  it  to  the 
Romans  as  India. 

Accident  may  pass  a  phrase  into  general  use.  When  Benjamin 
Franklin  in  Paris  heard  of  General  Washington's  retreat  in  1776, 
he  exclaimed,  *'Ca  ira,"  or  "all  will  come  right  in  the  end,"  and 
later  in  the  French  revolution  it  became  part  of  the  words  of  a 
song,  and  still  later  Ca  ira  was  the  name  of  a  French  battleship. 

The  language  of  the  law  among  English  speaking  people  is 
mainly  Norman-French,  and  the  court  crier  who  opens  court  with 
"Oh  yes,"  may  not  know  that  it  is  a  corruption  of  Oyez,  which 
in  some  cases  has  been  changed  to  its  English  equivalent,  by  order 
of  the  judge,  into  ''Hear  ye.'' 

As  an  example  of  survivals  of  languages,  Canadian  French  is 
eighteenth  century  French,  and  the  language  spoken  by  the  moun-- 
taineers  of  Kentucky,  Tennessee  and  Virginia  is  that  of  England 
of  three  hundred  years  ago,  a  dialect  of  which  many  words  were 
in  use  in  Chaucer's  day,  and  the  ideas  of  these  primitive  people  are 
in  many  cases  like  those  of  such  very  old  English  times.  The 
Irish  dialect  is  essentially  the  pronounciation  of  old-time  English, 
when  the  vowels  had  the  continental  value  mixed  with  some  more 
modern  English  sounds. 

English  itself  is  a  mixture  of  the  ancient  continentally  pro- 
nounced words  with  dialect  corruptions,  which  account  for  the 
varying  pronunciations  of  vowels,  as  a  in  father  and  rather,  and 
its  neglect  in  tear  and  fear,  etc. 

Dumb  animals  cannot  be  denied  thought;  they  do  not  even 
analyze  consciously  their  impressions,  yet  they  study  conditions 
to  advantage,  make  up  their  minds  to  act  offensively  or  defen- 
sively without  a  word;  the  infant  does  pretty  much  the  same; 
so  do  the  deaf  and  dumb.     So  logic  does  not  depend  upon  words. 


LANGUAGE.  237 

as  Mill  claimed;  on  the  contrary  logical, inferences  may  be  vastly 
nearer  the  truth  before  words  are  used.  Hobbs  stated,  "truth 
and  falsity  have  no  place  among  such  living  creatures  as  do  not 
use  speech."  Of  course  he  would  regard  man  alone  as  the  speak- 
ing animal.  The  fox  and  wolf  resort  to  subterfuges,  and  dogs 
and  cats  know  that  playing  is  not  in  earnest. 

Addison  knew  his  inability  to  converse,  though  a  great  writer. 
Said  he,  "I  have  nine  pence  in  my  pocket,  but  I  can  write  you  a 
check  for  a  thousand  pounds."  Garrick  said  of  Goldsmith,  "He 
writes  like  an  angel  and  talks  like  poor  poll." 

It  is  a  pernicious  idea,  suggested  by  Max  Miiller,  that  ideas 
depend  upon  words.  The  superiority  of  the  modern  method  of 
object  teaching  disproves  it,  for  the  senses  may  know  a  thing 
better,  you  may  understand  objects  better  by  seeing,  feeling,  etc., 
rather  than  by  description. 

Words  may  indicate  things,  but  first  and  foremost  you  must 
understand  what  these  things  are,  what  the  words  mean,  showing 
that  understanding  precedes  words.  Then,  again,  a  man  may 
think  one  thing  and  say  another. 

We  read  facial  expression  unconsciously,  the  play  of  the  mus- 
cles of  the  face  in  smiles,  sadness,  animation  we  interpret  without 
analysis,  without  resolving  each  appearance  into  its  composite 
units,  and  so  we  read  faces  as  we  would  hieroglyphs,  each  entire 
expression  stands  for  itself,  nor  do  we  say  to  ourselves  this  indi- 
cates grief,  this  joy,  for  the  interpretation  is  swifter  than  words, 
and  so  words  are  not  in  such  cases  needed  for  thought.  As  in 
the  case  of  Gambetta,  thinking  could  be  facilitated  by  speaking, 
and  it  often  occurs  with  others  that  the  act  of  speaking  appears 
to  bring  a  flow  of  ideas,  sometimes  writing  does  the  same  thing, 
and  excitement  may  also  increase  the  ability  to  think,  act  or  speak, 
though  it  may  also  confuse  ideas,  and  those  unaccustomed  to 
writing  or  speaking  much  are  not  helped  to  think  more  clearly. 
Habit  and  aptitude  has  much  to  do  with  such  matters.  On  the 
other  hand,  great  thinkers  have  been  reticent  or  had  poor  deliver- 
ies. Sir  John  Hunter  could  express  himself  with  difficulty,  and 
yet  his  researches  added  greatly  to  our  knowledge,  while  the  most 
voluble  elocutionist  may  have  an  empty  head.  Napoleon  re- 
garded orators  as  mere  manufacturers  of  phrases.     Cuyler  asks 


238  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

what  is  eloquence  but  truth  in  earnest  ?  Or  its  semblance,  might 
have  been  added,  for  one  can  be  as  earnest  in  lying  as  in  truth 
teaching,  or  may  be  energetically  mistaken. 

One  may  prate  of  things  glibly  and  be  unable  to  apply  the 
words  practically.  A  parrot-like  repetition  of  the  contents  of  a 
book  may  be  associated  with  utter  inability  to  understand  the  sub- 
ject memorized.  Words  are  often  learned  and  meaning  often 
neglected,  as  when  songs  and  phrases  in  a  foreign  tongue  are 
committed  to  memory.  My  German  teacher  believed  that  God 
made  languages.     A  frightful  charge  against  the  deity. 

Miiller  says  that  "if  you  wish  to  assert  that  language  has  vari- 
ous beginnings  you  must  prove  it  impossible  it  could  have  had 
a  common  origin."  Ignoring  the  bad  logic  in  the  remark,  we  can 
reply  that  while  Aryan,  Semitic  and  Turanian  families  have  suf- 
ficient unlikeness  to  warrant  the  idea  of  separate  origin  of  these 
tongues  from  which  the  others  descended,  and  as  for  coincidences 
in  evolution,  like  causes  producing  like  effects,  could  enable  inde- 
pendent development,  and  in  exclamations  and  emotional  lan- 
guage generally  similar  organs  and  environment  is  likely  to 
produce  similar  conditions  as  to  gestures,  grimaces  and  a  few 
words.  But  while  all  Aryan  languages  had  a  similar  origin,  the 
Semitic  and  Turanian  are  not  traceable  to  any  Aryan  origin.  As 
evidence  that  language  is  not  necessarily  race,  Hutson  cites  the 
fact  that  Jews  speak  all  languages  but  the  original  Hebrew. 

Hutson-^  says  language  began  with  positional  grammar.  Just 
as  children  put  two  or  three  words  together,  so  races  use  the  full 
sentence  structure.  The  relation  of  words  to  each  other  may  be 
expressed  by  position,  by  intonation,  by  inflection  and  by  con- 
nectives. In  a  few  tongues  positional  grammar  alone  prevails. 
Chinese  use  both  position  and  intonation.  In  that  language  ta 
means  great,  greatness,  or  to  grow,  or  very  much,  or  very,  accord- 
ing to  its  position.  One  word  may  also  determine  the  precise 
meaning  of  another.  In  Chinese  jin  means  man,  and  tu  crowd,  so 
jin-tu  is  a  crowd  of  men.  The  next  step  was  for  the  determina- 
tive to  undergo  phonetic  decay  and  become  a  mere  suffix.  Thus 
in  Burmese  the  plural  is  formed  by  to  and  in  Finnish  by  t. 

"'  Hutson,  Op.  Git. 


LANGUAGE.  239 

Some  tongues  showed  a  preference  for  prefixes.  The  vowel 
inflection  of  the  Semitic  is  another  step,  the  interior  change  of  a 
word  to  denote  meanings.  Next  came  mixture  of  words  with  lost 
identity,  broken  into  short  forms.  This  originated  in  external 
inflection  and  characterizes  the  Aryan  languages.  The  next  step 
was  the  gradual  wearing  away  or  abandonment  of  inflections  and 
the  use  in  their  places  of  similar  connections  on  which  stress  is  to 
be  laid,  but  which  act  as, stepping  stones  from  idea  to  idea.  Many 
languages  show  partial  advance  in  several  of  these  directions  and 
are  not  bound  to  any  particular  system,  though  one  system  may 
predominate. 

Multiple  declensions,  conjugations  and  irregular  verbs  are  due 
to  the  mixture  of  inflections  of  several  languages.  Philologists 
now  admit  that  conjugations,  declensions,  etc.,  originally  existed 
as  distinct  words  that  have  since  then  become  joined  together. 
Languages  that  are  most  symmetrical  and  complex  are  lower  than 
irregular,  abbreviated  and  bastardized  languages,  through  the 
fusion  of  various  conquered,  conquering  or  immigrant  races. 
Whitney^*  holds  that  conjunctions  are  as  a  class  the  words  of 
latest  development  in  a  language. 

Tasman  spoke  of  the  Australian  aborigines  as  a  malicious  and 
miserable  race  of  savages  in  1642,  and  the  North  Australian  lan- 
guage upon  being  recorded  was  regarded  as  "refined."  The  verb 
presents  a  variety  of  conjugations  expressing  nearly  all  the  words 
and  terms  of  the  Greek.  There  is  a  dual  as  well  as  a  plural  form 
in  the  declension  of  verbs,  nouns,  pronouns  and  adjectives.  The 
distinction  of  genders  is  not  marked ;  adverbs  are  declined  by 
terminational  inflections.  There  are  four  words  for  the  elemen- 
tary numbers  i,  2,  3,  but  four  is  two-two,  five  is  two-three,  etc.; 
they  have  no  idea  of  decimals,  and  have  a  great  many  dialects. 
The  Australian  savage  language  is  regular  and  simple,  in  keeping 
with  its  poverty  of  ideas.  The  Spanish  language  is  probably  the 
most  beautiful,  resonant,  inflexible  of  any  of  Latin  descent.  But 
what  is  there  in  the  Spanish  language?  The  inquisition  in  de- 
stroying thousands  of  thinkers  in  Spain,  both  male  and  female, 
helped  to  fix  and  impoverish  Spanish  tongues  and  brains. 

Language  has  too  often  deranged  thought,  introduced  confu- 

**  German  Grammar,  p.  174. 


240  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

sion  where  the  deaf  and  dumb  have  thought  more  clearly.  Berke- 
ley said  that  words  were  often  impediments  to  thought.  In  many 
cases  they  convey  wrong  impressions,  may  be  false  symbols,  or 
may  choke  intellectual  processes  by  their  inadequacy.  Huxley 
taught  that,  owing  to  so  many  misnomers  in  botany  and  zoology, 
the  sooner  you  forgot  the  original  derivation  of  many  names  the 
better.  Attaching  importance  to  the  superficial  indications  of  a 
name  in  science  has  repeatedly  misled  where  later  knowledge 
shows  that  the  original  application  of  the  name  was  a  mistake. 
Lord  Bacon  remarked  that  "words  mightily  entangle  and  pervert 
the  judgment." 

The  gradual  changes  incurred  by  words  in  the  course  of  their 
evolution  may  cause  their  origin  to  be  lost,  as  when  a  dialect  mis- 
pronounces a  word,  differently  from  what  it  is  spelled,  another 
dialect  change  occurs  and  a  few  such  mutations  make  a  word 
wholly  unlike  its  original. 

The  Cherokees  use  vowel  sounds  in  words  that  do  not  require 
the  mouth  to  be  closed,  but  in  such  words  as  Chicamauga,  Chika- 
hominy,  death  or  blood  is  indicated,  so  that  with  labials  in  which 
the  mouth  is  closed  in  forming  a  word  there  is  a  somber  meaning 
in  their  language.  This  is  equivalent  to  affirmatives  in  many 
languages  being  formed  by  open-mouthed  words,  as  yes,  yea,  aye, 
oui,  while  non,  nay,  nein  are  lingual  and  dental. 

There  are  old  words  which  survive  with  restricted  meanings, 
for  instance,  in  old  English  luke  meant  warm,  but  the  two  words 
joined  have  passed  into  use  as  ''luke-warm,"  and  seldom  mean 
other  than  moderately  warm  water,  neither  cold  or  hot. 

Buffetier  becomes  corrupted  into  beef  eater,  as  a  name  for  the 
guards  of  the  London  Tower,  and  Max  Miiller  notes  that  many 
old  tavern  signs  contributed  to  corruption.  A  sign  board  was 
originally  a  picture  of  a  plume  of  feathers,  and  became,  when 
spelled  on  a  later  sign  "plum  and  feathers."  A  St.  Catherine's 
wheel  became  a  cat  and  wheel.  The  Boulogne  gate  became 
known  as  Bull  and  gate,  "God  encompasseth  us"  was  turned  into 
goat  and  compasses. 

The  Yankton  and  Sisseton  tribes  of  the  Sioux  nation  were  put 
upon  separate  reservations  and  after  ten  years  dialect  differences 
were  noted  in  one  tribe  having  changed  m  to  n  in  many  words. 


LANGUAGE.  24I 

as  words  like  the  Spanish  Don  differ  from  the  Portuguese  Dom. 
The  Phrygians,  a  cross  between  ancient  Aryans  and  Greeks, 
changed  m  into  n  in  their  word  terminations. 

Curfew  is  a  corrupted  contraction  of  cover  fire.  According 
to  RawHnson^^  the  names  Europe  and  Asia  signify  west  and  east, 
they  were  Semitic  terms  passed  to  the  Greeks  through  the  PhcEni- 
cians. 

Sunday  is  from  the  Saxon  Sunna  doeg,  also  Sun's  doeg,  corre- 
sponding to  the  Hebrew  Shabbath. 

Monday  is  Saxon  Monan  doeg,  or  Moon's  day.  Monath  was 
new  moon. 

Tuesday,  Tuisco  the  German  Tuisto,  the  son  of  Terra,  the 
earth.  In  some  dialects  Dings  dag  or  things  day,  to  plead,  at- 
tempt, cheapen. 

Wednesday,  from  Woden  or  Odin,  the  Hercules  or  War  god. 

Thursday  from  Thor,  the  thunderer,  the  god  of  storms. 

Friday  from  Friga,  the  Venus,  and  the  most  revered  of  god- 
desses of  the  Danes  and  Saxons,  the  wife  of  Woden  and  the 
mother  of  Thor. 

Saturday,  Seater,  as  Saturn  represents  time. 

The  ancient  Saxons,  like  the  American  Indians,  named  people 
after  animals.     Hengist  and  Horsa  mean  horse  in  old  Saxon. 

Tartar  is  a  general  name  for  general  tribes  in  Asia. 

Thing,  tinga,  to  speak,  originated  Thingvalla,  Althing,  the 
judicial  and  legislative  assembly  of  Northmen. 

Max  Miiller  accounts  for  the  changes  of  tree  names  between 
certain  Aryan  countries  by  migrations  of  people  from  a  country 
of  fir  trees,  to  another  region  abounding  in  oak  trees,  which  they 
called  by  the  original  name  fir,  and  later  beeches  onlv  being  seen, 
the  name  fir  was  still  used  to  name  them,  so  that  fir  practically 
meant  any  kind  of  a  tree.  Scotch  fir  is  found  at  the  bottom  of 
peat-bogs  in  Denmark,  and  above  this  layer  are  found  the  com- 
mon oak,  then  alder,  birch  and  hazel,  the  beech  succeeds  the  oak. 
The  particular  prevailing  kind  of  tree  was  superseded  in  the 
course  of  ages  and  the  name  of  the  first  kind  of  trees  may  be 
transferred  to  the  succeeding  kind.     The  English  word  fir  and  the 

^  Notes  to  Herodotus,  Vol.  3,  p.  2>Z- 


242  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

German  Fohre  is  quercus  in  Latin,  which,  traced  to  Anglo-Saxon 
is  furh,  in  old  high  German  it  is  forakah  (Pinus  sylvesfris) .  But 
in  Lombard  fereha  is  mentioned  as  the  name  of  oak,  and  Grimm 
gives  ferch  as  oak,  blood,  life.  The  Sanskrit  dm  means  wood. 
Gothic  trievi  tree,  used  in  Greek  as  oak  druys.  The  Irish  darach, 
Welsh  derw,  mean  oak  and  oak  only.-^  So  fir  came  to  mean  oak 
and  another  word  meaning  oak  was  transferred  to  beech  by  the 
change  of  vegetation  in  those  early  days.  Sayce^'^  says  that  the 
same  word  signifying  oak  in  Greek  means  beech  in  Latin. 

Phonetic  corruption  wholly  changes  a  language  as  zingt  con- 
tains the  remains  of  deux  and  dix,  and  twenty  is  from  the  Gothic 
tvai,  tig  jus  (two  decades),  the  Anglo-Saron  tuentig,  framed  from 
Teutonic  materials.  The  Latin  viginti  was  derived  from  the 
Sanskrit  vinsati.  Phonetic  corruption  is  seen  in  such  instances 
as  the  Bohemian  tsi,  as  pronounced,  spelled  as  dci,  being  the  re- 
mains of  Sanskrit  diihitar,  daughter,  which  means  the  milker,  so 
the  duty  of  the  female  Aryan  child  was  to  care  for  the  cows.  In 
aujourd  d'hui  (French  for  today ^  we  have  the  Latin  word  dies 
twice  as  ajour  and  hodie  corrupted  into  d'hui.  This  appears  like 
a  French  dialect  word  with  an  appended  Latin  dialect  translation, 
similar  to  the  combination  luke-warm.  Pater  in  Armenia  is 
hayr.  Compare  the  English  tear  with  the  French  larme.  Early 
forms  were  taer,  tehr,  teher,  taeher,  to  the  Gothic  tagr.  The 
Anglo-Saxon  taeher  takes  us  to  dakry  in  Greek  and  (d)asru  in 
Sanskrit.  The  French  larme  is  traceable  to  the  Latin  lacruma, 
but  are  lacruma  and  dakry  cognate  terms?  The  Greek  ddkry 
and  Latin  lacru  differ  only  in  initials  and  both  are  derived  from 
dak,  to  bite.  Tooth  in  Sanskrit  is  dat.  Latin  dens,  Gothic 
tanthus,  English  tooth.  Modern  German  j:ahu,  Greek  odontes, 
and  Latin  denies,  were  varieties  of  edontes  and  edentes,  the 
eaters. 

The  final  introduction  of  the  verbs  to  be  and  to  have,  accord- 
ing to  Adam  Smith,^^  enabled  mankind  to  relieve  their  memories 
and  thus  unconsciously  to  simplify  grammar.      ''To  be"  is  the 

^  Grimm,  Worterbuch,  S.  V.  Eiche.     Max  Miiller's  Science  of  Language, 

Appendix,  p.  239. 
"  Sayce,  The  Primitive  Home  of  the  Aryans,  p.  477. 
^  Moral  Sentiments,  Vol.  IV,  p.  426. 


LANGUAGE.  243 

most  abstract  and  metaphysical  of  all  the  verbs.  "The  complex- 
ity of  the  North  American  language  is  due  to  the  absence  of  the 
verb  Ho  be/  "'' 

There  were  multitudes  of  dialects  in  England  until  after  the 
Elizabethan  age,  when  great  authors  appeared  and  fixed  the  lan- 
guage to  some  extent.  English  spelling  was  unaltered  long  after 
the  spoken  word  had  become  different  from  its  original  pronun- 
ciation. The  orthography  of  our  time  is  very  different  from  that 
of  Shakespeare's  age,  and  the  pronunciation  is  very  different.^*^ 

French  is  curious  in  being  inflected  in  written,  and  uninflected 
in  spoken,  speech,  as  the  learned  recorded  language  advanced  and 
the  unlearned  common  speech  is  largely  pronounced  as  it  was 
originally  without  inflections,  and  even  controls  the  pronunciation 
of  the  written  speech. 

Changes  of  languages  are  explained  by  Miiller  to  have  made 
alterations  in  the  names  applied  to  the  constellations  of  stars  in 
the  north,  known  as  the  dipper.  Originally  it  was  called  the  seven 
sages.  Similarly  the  Jornada  del  Muerte,  or  Journey  of  Death, 
a  sandy  New  Mexican  waste,  was  contracted  and  corrupted  into 
^'Horn  alley,"  and  supposed  to  have  obtained  its  name  from  the 
cattle  horns  so  abundant  in  that  desert,  whereas  it  was  the  trav- 
eler's mistaken  pronunciation  of  Jornada  which  sounded  to  them 
like  Hornalley.  Also  the  famous  rotten  row  of  London,  like 
Unter  den  Linden  of  Berlin,  is  the  fashionable  and  royal  road, 
and  is  reduced  from  the  original  route  du  roi. 

Ivar  Aasen  has  tried  to  unite  the  hundreds  of  dialects  of  Nor- 
way in  a  new  language  being  related  as  a  denominator  to  the  dia- 
lects as  numerators.  This  artificial  language  has  been  legalized 
by  the  starthing  and  is  taught  in  the  Christiania  University.  It 
is  making  inroads  upon  the  Dano-Norwegian  official  language. 

Old-fashioned  pronunciation  was  Roome,  chaney,  laelock  and 
goold,  for  Rome,  china,  lilac  and  gold,  and  courteous  old  gentle-  . 
men  are  obleeged  instead  of  obliged,  and  hand  book,  an  old  Saxon 
word,  is  lately  being  used  instead  of  manual.  ^ 

Of  English  one-half  of  the  words  in  use  are  Teutonic,  of  the 

^  Gallatin's  Transac,  Am.  Antiq.  Soc,  Vol.  II,  p.  176. 

^^  Origin  and  History  of  the  EnglishLanguage,  p.  194,  G.  P.  Marsh,  1892. 


244  "^"^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

remaining  half  four-fifths  are  from  the  Latin,  and  the  rest  from 
other  tongues. 

What  makes  it  Hkely  that  iron  was  not  known  previous  to  the 
separation  of  the  Aryan  nations,  is  the  fact  that  its  names  vary  in 
every  one  of  its  languages,  but  there  is  a  name  for  copper  which 
is  shared  by  Latin  and  Teutonic  languages,  aes  aeris,  Gothic  ais, 
old  high  German  cr,  modern  German  er-z,  Anglo-Saxon  ar, 
English  ore.  Like  chalkos  of  Greece,  which  originally  meant 
copper  but  came  to  mean  metal  in  general,  bronze  or  brass,  the 
Latin  aes  also  changed  from  the  former  to  the  latter  meaning,  the 
same  occurred  in  the  Teutonic  language. 

Max  Miiller  regards  language  as  the  most  important  means 
of  determining  races  apart,  though  he  acknowledges  that  it  has 
its  limitations,  owing  to  the  intermingling  of  people  great  enough 
in  any  age,  and  more  so  in  the  present.  Occasionally  both  the 
language  and  civilization  of  one  race  have  been  merged  into  that 
of  another.  It  affords  a  working  basis  from  which  races  can  be 
studied,  and  he  places  physical  and  exterior  features  in  a  subordi- 
nate relation,  such  as  height,  color,  diversity  of  habit,  etc.  It  is 
puzzling  to  find  the  word  Arya  with  different  meanings  attached, 
but  it  is  likely  that  the  word  was  used,  as  nearly  every  race  used 
its  name,  to  indicate  its  superiority  over  all  other  people.  Each 
tribe  fancied  itself  the  only  real  people,  as  the  Eskimo  called  them- 
selves Innuit,  the  people.  According  to  Miiller  Arya  means  lan- 
guage, and  the  people  or  the  language  would  naturally  be  the 
proud  title  they  would  arrogate  to  themselves  and  their  tongue. 
But  we  find  them  also  spoken  of  as  the  ploughmen ;  this  must 
have  been  a  much  later  name  for  Aryans,  because  they  were 
known  as  Aryans  before  they  became  ploughmen,  and  when  they 
were  herders  of  cattle  and  sheep.  A  name  probably  given  by 
neighboring  tribes.  The  other  interpretation  of  noble,  can  readily 
be  explained  as  the  Sanskrit  indication  for  good  family,  because 
the  Aryans  were  the  ruling  classes  in  India,  the  highest  caste,  and 
the  names  of  the  people  indicated  their  relative  position  just  as 
Manchu  does  in  China  today. 

Each  language  tends  to  split  into  the  common  and  the  learned 
divisions.  Latin  divided  thus  about  the  time  of  the  second  Punic 
war,  when  the  nation  divided  into  the  lettered  and  the  unlettered. 


LANGUAGE.  245 

Dialects  may  grow  into  languages  and  some  of  these  may 
change  into  dialects  just  as  tribes  cohere  into  nations  and  may 
later  split  up  into  tribes,  and  as  varieties  form  species  and  finally 
families,  and  genera  may  degenerate,  and  some  languages  may 
undergo  arrested  development. 

Miiller  tells  of  a  missionary  in  Central  America  writing  down 
the  language  of  seven  tribes,  compiling  a  dictionary  of  all  the 
words  he  could  hear.  Returning  to  the  same  regions  after  ten 
years,  the  dictionary  was  found  to  have  become  antiquated  and 
useless.  Old  words  had  sunk  and  new  words  had  risen,  and  the 
language  had  radically  changed.  American  Indians  had  never 
united  in  very  large  or  permanent  confederacies,  and  hence  they 
have  separate  languages  for  each  tribe. 

Among  African  children  language  becomes  corrupted  so  they 
are  habituated  to  a  speech  of  their  own,  and  in  one  generation  the 
entire  language  is  changed.  The  father's  tongue  becomes  that 
of  the  family  and  finally  that  of  the  clan,  but  families  of  the  same 
clan  may  differ  in  speech.  Class  dialects  spring  up  as  those  of 
servants,  grooms,  shepherds  and  soldiers.  Even  we  of  today  do 
not  speak  at  home  as  we  do  in  public. 

Latham  says  :^^  ''There  are  slight  differences  of  speech  be- 
tween members  of  the  same  family,  between  villages  and  towns 
they  increase,  and  they  become  greater  still  when  there  is  a  dif- 
ference of  tribe,  clan  or  nationality.  A  difference  of  words  or  of 
pronunciation  is  often  found  among  similar  people.  A  Scotch- 
man, Irishman  and  Englishman  may  speak  the  same  words,  but 
with  a  difference  of  tone  or  accent.  When  differences  reach  a 
certain  point  they  constitute  dialect,  and  when  two  forms  of 
speech  differ  to  the  extern  of  mutual  unintelligibility,  the  result  is 
two  different  languages. 

Natural  movements  of  the  body,  including  face  and  limbs, 
being  read  and  understood  by  animals,  the  next  step  would  be  to 
repeat  or  imitate  such  motions  intentionally,  to  convey  a  meaning 
to  the  observer ;  thus  the  horse  paws  to  show  that  he  is  impatient 
to  start  as  the  dog  jumps  for  the  same  purpose,  and  those  animals 
look  in  the  direction  they  wish  to  travel.  Such  movements  con- 
tain the  rudiments  of  means  of  communication  of  thoughts,  and 

'^  Comparative  Philology,  R.  G.  Latham,  London,  1863. 


246  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

certainly  some  appreciation  of  means  to  ends  and  the  relation 
of  cause  and  effect  must  exist  to  enable  this  step  to  be  taken,  imi- 
tation for  a  purpose.  The  brain  parts  involved  in  all  this  would 
be  that  for  recording  sight  impressions,  and  the  limb  and  other 
movement  centers  with  any  possible  intellect  center  in  addition. 
If  the  impelling  motive  is  for  food  or  sexual,  the  corresponding 
parts  of  the  brain  would  undoubtedly  be  exercised  in  the  volun- 
tary exhibitions  of  this  finally  decided  upon  expression  or  ges- 
ture-talk. Following  this  came  a  developed  gesticulation  which 
man  exhibits  in  its  highest,  and  which  the  pointer  and  setter  dogs 
possess  in  rudimentary  degree.  Inarticulate  speech  by  sounds 
followed,  then  articulate  speech  came  and  developed  the  speech 
center  of  the  brain,  taking  the  place  of  the  right  arm  movements 
it  occupied  a  spot  in  the  left  brain  between  the  right  hand  center 
and  the  intellectual  fore-brain.  When  writing  was  added  to 
man's  means  of  expression,  the  writing  center  appeared  between 
the  hand  center  and  the  fore-brain,  just  over  the  speech  center. 
All  in  the  ''symbolic  field." 

Language  includes  signs  or  speech  and  speech  may  be  articu- 
late or  inarticulate,  by  words  or  records,  and  these  may  be  ar- 
ranged into  prose  or  poetry. 

The  earliest  equivalent  of  writing  would  be  the  reminder,  as 
when  an  Indian  places  a  row  of  stones  or  a  pointed  stick  to  denote 
a  direction  so  that  another  may  know  what  road  to  take  or  to 
avoid. 

Notched  sticks  were  the  oldest  form  of  mnemonic  methods, 
Indians  notch  sticks  for  scalps  or  make  a  tally  of  days  on  a  jour- 
ney. Dairymen  kept  account  of  milk  supplied  on  a  stick  for  each 
family.  The  Clog  almanac  and  Exchequer  tallies  of  Great  Britain 
are  other  instances  of  mnemonic  systems. 

A  step  higher  comes  the  notched  stick  or  knotted  string  called 
the  quippu  by  the  ancient  Peruvians,  Egyptians  and  Chinese. 
Rude  sketches  on  stones  were  the  methods  that  were  then  adopted 
by  primitive  men,  and  as  colored  earths  were  used,  of  course  the 
sketches  did  not  last  long  until  the  pictures  were  cut  into  the  rock, 
mere  outline  markings,  and  when  the  earth  was  rubbed  into  the 
cut  lines  the  colors  have  been  in  some  cases  preserved  for  thou- 
sands of  years.      Some  of  the  imperfections  in  these  scratched 


LANGUAGE.  247 

records  can  be  due  to  the  pictures  being  partly  cut  and  partly- 
painted,  and  the  earth  used  in  the  painting  having  disappeared. 
Of  course  multitudes  of  perishable  materials  such  as  skins  of  ani- 
mals were  drawn  upon  by  early  men,  and  we  learn  that  the  Picts 
and  Scots  found  in  Ireland  and  Scotland  by  the  Romans  were 
tattooed,  and  their  names  are  derived  from  that  fact.  Tattooing 
was  sometimes  tribal  marking,  but  chiefly  it  was  under  priestly 
control  and  intended  to  drive  away  demons  and  disease. 

Double  figures  facing  outward  were  put  upon  the  backs.  In 
this  way  the  thunder-bird,  or  eagle,  becomes  a  double-headed 
eagle,  resembling  that  of  Russia,  Austria,  and  the  ''Holy  Roman 
Empire,"  which  had  its  origin  in  the  bas-relief  of  Hittite  sculp- 
ture^^. 

Picture  writing  developed  with  pictures,  part  pictures  and 
symbols  to  develop  ideas,  and  no  matter  how  highly  developed  the 
characters  might  be  in  pictography  they  are  always  representa- 
tives of  ideas,  ideograms.  An  attempt  was  made  at  first  to  sketch 
as  much  of  the  animal  or  object  as  possible,  but  finally  a  part  of 
the  animal,  as  its  foot  or  head,  was  found  to  convey  the  idea  just 
as  well,  and  so  the  advance  was  made  from  pictures  to  part  pic- 
tures, but  often  these  two  methods  were  mixed  in  practice. 
Eventually  more  marks  that  gave  a  hint  of  the  pictures  of  part  of 
the  animal  became  symbols,  just  as  the  letter  U  could  symbolize 
a  hoof  which  stands  for  the  horse.  The  Aztec  pictographs  and 
calendars  of  the  Dakota  Indians  are  of  this  nature. 

Hoffman  thinks  that  primitive  man  recorded  such  things  as 
most  frequently  occurred  in  his  struggle  for  existence.  Records 
of  his  success  in  hunting  notify  others  of  game  near,  by  pictures 
of  animals.  Boasting  was  assisted  by  his  rough  pictographs. 
Buffalo  robes  and  other  skins  contain  personal  exploits  of  the 
Indians.  Sometimes  these  were  drawn  on  the  outside  of  their 
tents. 

Zodiacal  signs  are  ideograms,  the  astronomical  signs  for  Mer- 
cury the  planet  is  a  symbol  degenerated  from  the  picture  of  two 
serpents  twined  on  a  stick,  the  caduceus  of  the  god  Mercury; 
while  the  figure  standing  for  Jupiter  is  a  rough  sketch  of  an 

''  Wm.  Wright,  The  Empire  of  the  Hittites,  p.  68,  1884. 


248  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

arm  holding  a  thunderbolt.  Zodiacal  signs  originated  about 
B.  C.  700. 

In  time  man  advanced  to  drawing  mythical  shapes,  such  as 
men  with  animal  bodies  or  heads,  or  childish  hideous  pictures  to 
represent  demons  of  disease,  the  gods  of  rain,  snow,  seasons  and 
other  things.  Some  of  these  represent  things  in  motion  or  special 
attributes,  and  the  attempt  to  draw  signs  of  gestures  still  further 
aided  in  the  suggestion  of  subjective  ideas,  as  empty  hands  or  ribs 
indicated  hunger,  a  hand  to  the  mouth  meant  eating.  The  Innuit 
of  Alaska  is  good  at  life-like  pictures.  The  Ojibwas  advanced  in 
picturing  gestures  and  suggesting  abstract  ideas  by  sketch  signs. 
Some  nations  of  Europe  and  Asia  went  to  the  ''rebus  stage,''  that 
is,  the  names  of  the  things  pictured  were  sometimes  used  in  an- 
other sense.  This  rebus  constituted  sound  pictures  or  phono- 
grams, which  Taylor  describes  as  follows :  A  box  with  us  means 
a  blow  on  the  ear,  a  receptacle,  an  evergreen,  a  kind  of  wood,  and 
to  name  the  compass  points.  Now  if  a  picture  of  a  box  on  the 
ear  were  to  stand  for  all  these  it  would  be  an  ideogram  changed 
into  a  phonogram,  we  would  have  passed  from  pictography  to 
tone  writing.  This  the  Chinese  did,  and  a  second  character  along- 
side the  first  determined  which  meaning  was  to  be  taken  from  the 
homophones,  or  phonograms  of  similar  sounds. 

The  Japanese  borrowed  the  Chinese  methods  and  Egyptians 
began  where  the  Americans  did,  but  advanced  to  taking  these 
signs  for  initial  sounds,  a  step  called  aerology. 

The  character  which  had  been  a  picture  representing  an  idea 
became  a  phonogram  representing  a  sound,  and  phonograms 
may  stand  for  words,  syllables  or  still  simpler  sound  elements 
which  may  be  called  letters,  and  collections  of  these  simple  sounds 
of  any  language  make  its  alphabet.  From  reminders  through  pic- 
ture writing  to  phonetic  writing  with  an  alphabet  is  the  course  of 
development,  nor  have  we  reached  the  best  stopping  place,  for 
our  spelling  is  practically  hieroglyphic  and  our  letter  symbols 
have  too  many  sound  values,  and  some  have  none  at  all. 

The  American  Indians  used  reminders ;  they  drew  expression 
pictures  and  developed  complicated  pictography  sufficient  for  the 
writing  of  real  books.     Starr  thinks  that  som?  Mexican  and  Cen- 


LANGUAGE.  249 

tral  American  Indians  were  passing  from  the  use  of  ideograms  to 
phonograms. 

Egyptians  began  with  reminders  and  pictures,  and  then  com- 
bined the  pictures,  complex  ideograms,  which  were  gradually 
made  to  stand  for  sounds,  entire  words.  But  as  the  one  sound 
meant  so  many  different  things,  the  picture  had  to  have  some  kind 
of  additional  sign  or  determinant,  to  enable  determination  of 
which  particular  object  is  meant  by  the  sound  the  picture  repre- 
sents. And  some  of  these  characters  after  awhile  came  to  be  used 
for  almost  simple  sounds  like  mu,  from  mulek,  the  owl,  and  if  the 
Egyptians  had  discarded  all  the  other  hieroglyphics  and  used  in- 
stead such  characters  as  stood  for  simple  sounds,  the  problem 
would  have  been  solved,  but  they  could  not  shake  off  traditional 
methods  so  in  the  latter  days  of  ancient  Egypt  owing  to  the  dif- 
ferences of  methods  there  was  great  confusion  in  writing.  There 
were  simple  ideograms,  phonograms  standing  for  words,  broken 
down  phonograms,  some  of  which  represented  almost  elementary 
sounds,  and  all  of  those  might  appear  in  one  inscription. 

Egyptian  characters  have  been  classed  as  first  ideographic  or 
hieroglyphic,  then  hieratic,  which  was  a  script  symbolizing  of  the 
hieroglyphics  used  by  priests,  but  the  common  people  got  up 
another  script  system  called  the  demotic,  the  subsequent  develop- 
ment could  have  been  symbolic  and  finally  alphabetic,  which  it 
was  to  a  limited  extent. 

The  Phoenicians  learned  the  art  of  writing  from  the  Egyptians, 
but  usually  took  only  the  simplest  phonograms,  and  in  this  way 
foreshadowed  the  first  alphabet  proper.  These  simple  sound 
pictures  were  yielded  by  the  process  of  aerology,  which  simply 
means  allowing  the  picture  to  stand  for  the  initial  of  its  name,  and 
from  Phoenicia  these  initial  letters  were  carried  to  Cyprus,  Greece 
and  Rome.  Tylor  says  there  was  in  the  old  Egyptian  picture 
writing  a  character  which  meant  owl.  It  was  a  simple  picture  of 
a  bird,  the  word  owl  was  mulek,  and  in  time  the  ideogram  be- 
came a  phonogram  for  a  syllable  mu,  the  lek  being  omitted.  Still 
later,  by  aerology,  or  taking  the  initial  of  mu,  the  character  was 
used  for  the  sound  m.  The  Latins  and  Greeks  followed  the 
example  of  the  Phoenicians,  so  when  we  see  the  letter  M  we  know 
that  it  came  from  the  Egyptian  picture  of  an  owl's  head,  the  ears 


250  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

are  indicated  in  the  upper  angles,  and  the  beak  in  the  lower  angle 
of  the  letter. 

The  Roman  numerals  are  pictures  of  fingers,  as  their  name, 
digits,  fehow,  and  the  reason  watch  and  clock  faces  give  IIII  in- 
stead of  IV  is  that  the  method  of  subtraction  by  placing  a  digit 
before  the  V  had  not  been  used  at  the  time  of  watch  and  clock 
origin,  and  so  the  old  method  survives  by  rigid  imitation  from 
those  days.  The  X  denotes  the  hands  crossed  and  V  half  of  the 
X,  and  beyond  doubt  great  periods  of  time  elapsed  between  the 
use  of  numbers  of  straight  marks  and  the  invention  of  the  symbols 
V  and  X  and  the  subsequent  addition  and  subtraction  values  of 
position  of  digits  after  and  before  these.  vSome  claim  the  V  is 
the  thumb  and  fingers  of  one  hand.  The  Chinese  begin  with 
digits  and  cursive  corruption  has  complicated  their  fours  and 
subsequent  numbers  till  ten  is  reached,  which  is  a  rectangular 
cross.  The.  Roman,  Arabic  and  Chinese  admit  of  the  decimal  cal- 
culation. Where  the  toes  as  well  as  the  fingers  were  counted, 
as  it  is  likely  was  the  custom  of  the  ancient  Gauls,  the  vigesimal 
system  became  engrafted,  hence  the  French  method  of  calling 
eighty  four  twenty,  and  adding  a  ten  in  the  case  of  ninety.  Three 
score  and  ten  in  old  English  is  based  on  the  same  vigesimal  sys- 
tem which  considered  a  score  as  a  man  with  ten  fingers  and  ten 
toes.     The  Mexican  caribs  call  twenty  one  man. 

The  Chaldean  cuneiform  numerals  were  extremely  simple, 
consisting  of  one  impress  of  the  graver  for  each  unit,  but  the 
marks  were  arranged  after  a  system  which  could  easily  have  led 
to  arbitrary  symbols  for  each  numeral  after  the  Arabic  fashion. 
Dr.  Clay,  the  Assyriologist  of  the  University  of  Pennsylvania, 
sketched  for  me  these  characters  as  the  Babylonian  numerals : 

The  original  Arabic  numerals,  it  is  likely,  were  just  as  prim- 
itive, but  it  occurred  to  some  thinker  to  arrange  the  unit  marks 
so  that  a  glance  enabled  them  to  be  counted,  even  by  a  more 
artistic  arrangement  than  the  Assyrian.  If  you  count  the  sepa- 
rate marks  in  the  following  early  Arabic  numbers  and  then  com- 
pare the  intermediate  cursive  or  rapidly,  carelessly  written  script 
wdth  what  preceded  and  followed  in  our  modern  every  day  figures, 
you  get  an  idea  of  the  evolution  of  this  mode  of  recording. 

The  Arabian  numerals  came  into  Europe  through  the  Sara- 


LANGUAGE.  25I 

cens.  Berbert,  near  the  end  of  the  tenth  century,  was  the  first 
who,  by  traveHng  into  Spain,  learned  something  of  Arabian 
Science.  A  common  Hterary  tradition  ascribes  to  him  the  intro- 
duction of  their  numerals  and  of  the  arithmetic  founded  on  them 
into  Europe^"^  in  the  middle  ages. 

The  ten  symbol  degenerating  into  an  elongated  rectangle  and 
then  into  a  cipher  o,  but  the  Romans  seem  to  have  borrowed  the 
X  for  their  lo  from  the  Arabians,  which  part  of  that  symbol  they 
dropped.  The  Babylonians  developed  their  large  unit  mark 
meaning  ten  into  a  cipher,  just  as  the  Arabians  could  have  first 
prefixed  a  figure  2  to  the  10  mark  to  mean  twenty,  a  figure  3  for 
thirty,  and  so  on,  finally  putting  a  figure  i  before  it  to  denote  ten, 
which  converted  the  former  digit  ten  into  the  modern  cipher,  and 
set  the  world  ages  ahead  in  ability  to  compute. 

V  w  vwvw  vw  vw  vw  vw  vw 
^         V  w  vw  vw  wvwv 

V  w  wv 


1>    ^ 


1 


-lEDBBBB 
IZ3I456S88  ox 

The  X  in  the  square  evolved  from  the  X  between  two  squares, 
the  circle  around  the  X  was  the  rapidly  written  next  step.    Final- 

^  Hallam,  Literature  of  Europe  in  the  Middle  Ages. 


352 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


ly  the  circle  alone  was  retained  by  the  Arabians,  while  the  Ro- 
mans borrowed  the  X  from  them,  preceded  by  the  X  inside  the 
cipher  for  a  long  while  being  used  by  the  Romans  till  the  outer 
circle  was  dropped. 

As  Hoffman  says :  "It  is  interesting  to  notice  how  similarly 
human  minds  work  in  remote  places  from  each  other.  Given  the 
same  problems  and  similar  surroundings,  we  shall  find  much  the 
same  result." 

North  American  Indians  began  with  pictures,  then  part  pic- 
tures and  symbols,  and  were  just  beginning  to  think  of  phono- 
grams. The  Chinese  began  with  reminders,  then,  pictures  to 
phonograms,  the  Japanese  went  a  step  further  and  used  sound 
characters,  each  of  which  represents  a  syllable,  but  failed  to  reach 
the  aerology  stage  of  initial  letters.  The  Egyptian  began  with 
reminders  and  pictures  and  passed  through  phonograms  almost 
to  letters,  which  the  Phoenicians  constructed  from  the  Egyptian 
vantage  ground. 

The  stages  may  be  restated  as  reminders,  such  as  the  quippu 
pictures  or  the  kind  that  >vere  put  on  wampum  belts,  then  com- 
bination pictures,  word  phonograms,  syllable  phonograms,  letter 
phonograms. 

As  various  nations  and  tribes  pass  through  practically  the 
same  stage  of  intellectual  development,  however  remote  and  inde- 
pendent of  one  another,  it  is  to  be  perceived  that  the  several  stages 
of  the  pictorial,  syllabic  and  alphabetic  representations  of  thought 
were  not  contemporaneous,  but  were  developed  in  different  por- 
tions of  the  world  at  various  periods  of  time. 

An  immense  time  is  between  the  pictures  and  the  alphabet 
assisted  greatly  in  the  step  from  barbarism  to  civilization  in  the 
Mesopotamian  valley  when  the  Babylonians  had  only  ideographic 
cursive  script,  that  is,  a  conventionalized  set  of  marks  represent- 
ing words  or  names  of  former  pictures. 

It  was  not  until  the  alphabetic  characters  became  separated 
from  their  syllabic  progenitors  that  the  highest  civilization  be- 
came possible.  The  employment  of  a  cumbrous  syllable  and 
ideographic  system  of  recording  sound  is  a  hindrance  in  the  de- 
velopment of  many  forms  of  progress,  as  is  shown  in  the  culture 
states  of  many  oriental  people. 


LANGUAGE.  253 

The  discovery  of  alphabetic  characters  made  possible  the 
record  and  transmission  of  language  and  culture  in  history,  liter- 
ature and  science,  and  nothing  seems  more  natural  to  us  than  to 
write  our  thoughts  by  means  of  26  phonograms,  the  graphic  sym- 
bols of  the  sounds  which  we  call  the  alphabet. 

Rawlinson  says  that  the  Phoenicians  resolved  speech  into  its 
elements  by  looking  for  some  common  object  with  a  name  the 
initial  of  which  made  the  sound  they  wanted  to  express.  In  this 
manner  the  eagle  was  made  the  sign  for  its  initial  sound  akhom, 
and  represented  A,  and  other  words  having  a  similar  initial  sound 
were  also  employed  to  represent  that  letter.  B  was  expressed  by 
a  leg  and  foot  and  two  other  characters.  There  were  four  forms 
for  T,  three  for  N,  for  K,  for  S,  for  J,  for  KH  and  for  H,  while 
there  were  two  for  L  or  R,  which  the  Egyptians  regarded  as  the 
same.  There  were  thus  several  sounds  for  each  letter,  except 
F  and  D,  which  were  represented  by  a  single  hieroglyph,  the  first 
by  a  horned  snake  and  the  last  by  a  hand  with  the  palm  upward.^* 
The  letter  M  is  traceable  through  Roman  and  Greek  to  the 
Phoenician,  and  finally  through  the  hieratic  to  the  linear  hiero- 
glyphic owl. 

H  came  from  the  Egyptian  sieve,  a  circle  with  dots  which 
degenerated  into  a  square  with  lines  in  Phoenicia,  and  with  but  one 
middle  line  in  Greece,  and  in  the  Roman  usage  and  later  Grecian 
the  top  and  bottom  of  the  square  was  omitted.  L  is  a  crouching 
lion. 

Although  the  alphabetic  prototypes  existed  in  the  Egyptian 
hieroglyphs,  and  were  by  that  people  unconsciously  employed,  in 
a  certain  sense  it  was  not  until  the  Semitic  race  discovered  and 
utilized  these  characters  by  acrologically  adapting  them  to  their 
own  language  that  the  alphabet  can  be  said  to  have  been  made. 

The  Semitic  peoples  composed  three  principal  divisions,  each 
of  which  developed  letters.  Europeans  are  indebted  to  the  Phoe- 
nicians, and  from  the  highlands  of  Asia  Minor,  Aram,  came  the 
Iranian  group  of  alphabets,  which  replaced  the  cuneiform  writing 
as  a  script  of  the  eastern  provinces  of  the  Persian  empire.  To 
the  -south  Semitic  type  the  ancient  alphabet  of  India  with  its 
numberless  descendants  must  be  referred. 
»*  Taylor,  The  Alphabet. 


254  '^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Europe  uses  Aryan  speech  with  a  Semitic  alphabet,  and  while 
our  letters  are  Phoenician  by  the  Roman  letter  divisions  upon  our 
watches  we  are  Babylonian,  and  our  present  method  of  dividing 
time  is  from  Babylon,  which  was  adopted  by  Hipparchus  in  the 
second  century  B.  C.  Max  Miiller  further  notes  that  twenty 
shillings  to  the  pound  originated  in  Babylon,  and  that  the  ratio 
of  gold  to  silver  in  ancient  Mesopotamia  was  i  to  13^.^^ 

Written  speech  was  first  sketches,  then  marks  that  stood  for 
the  sketch  or  picture,  then  pure  signs  or  symbols. 

Signs  of  words,  signs  of  symbols,  signs  to  express  the  sounds 
of  syllables,  signs  to  express  the  sounds  of  letters,  signs  to  make  a 
once  existing  letter,  such  is  the  order  of  development  of  written 
speech. 

Hard  stone  was  incised,  soft  cut  in  relief,  in  wood  carved,  in 
brick  stamped  in  soft  clay,  01  leaves  of  leather,  parchment  painted 
with  ink  brush,  or  written  with  pen  or  quill,  wax  tablets  written 
upon  by  stylus.  Some  writing  like  that  of  the  Jews  from  right 
to  left,  others,  like  that  of  the  Babylonians  and  Greeks,  written 
from  left  to  right,  or  alternately  above  downward. 

Assyrian  writing  became  wedge-shaped  when  clay  came  into 
use  as  a  writing  material,  because  the  marks  were  impressed  with 
the  corner  of  a  square-headed  implement,  the  clay  afterward  being 
baked  in  the  sun  or  in  an  oven.  In  Greece  votes  were  inscribed 
on  oyster  shells  (ostraca),  and  it  was  by  these  votes  that  banish- 
ment or  ostracism  was  made. 

Language  was  reduced  to  writing  by  accidental  development 
and  the  inducements  its  advantages  held  out,  but  by  very  slow 
degrees  and  after  millions  of  blunders,  while  multitudes  of  races 
have  not  corrected  their  blunders.  Even  now  the  largest  num- 
ber of  languages  have  produced  no  literature,  and  the  Phcenician 
inventors  of  letters  did  not  leave  any  evidences  of  their  appreciat- 
ing the  value  of  their  discovery  very  highly.  We  are  able  to 
translate  Egyptian  by  the  chance  finding  of  a  stone  engraved  with 
fourteen  lines  of  Egyptian  hieroglyphics  and  its  Greek  translation. 
This  Rosetta  stone  remained  the  small  portion  of  hieroglyphical 
writing  upon  which  ability  to  translate  other  inscriptions  rested 
until  the  discovery  of  the  decree  of  Canopus,  another  stone.  The 
"'  Select  Essays,  Vol.  II,  p.  498. 


LANGUAGE.  255 

Rosetta  was  on  hard  basalt  and  the  Canopus  on  lime  stone,  dated 
at  Memphis,  March  25,  B.  C.  196. 

Schleicher,  Lottner  and  Fick  studied  the  Aryan  languages 
from  a  genealogical  relationship,  but  Schmidt^^  gave  them  geo- 
graphical significance  alone,  and  instead  of  a  tree  branching  into 
divisions  of  the  Indo-European  stock,  he  represented  the  Aryan 
tongues  as  a  wave  spreading  in  concentric  circles  ever  thinner 
in  proportion  to  their  distance  from  the  center,  or  even  an  oblique 
plane,  inclined  from  Sanskrit  to  Celtic  in  an  interrupted  line. 

When  writing  became  developed  it  was  at  first  kept  secret  by 
the  priests  for  their  particular  use,  pretty  much  as  Egyptian  and 
other  priesthoods  have  thought  it  profitable  to  keep  the  common 
people  ignorant  so  that  more  wealth  could  be  frightened  from 
them. 

"Scalds"  before  the  general  diffusion  of  writing  committed 
matters  to  memory  such  as  laws,  customs,  precedents,  among  the 
Scandinavians,  and  were  living  books.  After  the  first*  half  of  the 
twelfth  century  they  disappeared,  as  writing  began  to  be  more 
general. 

Book  is  from  the  German  Buch,  originally  identical  with 
beech,  the  early  books  being  tablets  made  of  beech  wood.  Saxons 
and  Danes  used  beechwood  for  making  books.  The  Saxon  name 
for  beech  was  boc,  the  Danish  name  was  bog,  so  northern  natives 
derive  their  word  book.  The  Romans  used  the  thin  peel  liber 
between  the  wood  and  the  bark.  From  this  is  our  .word  library, 
and  the  French  use  livre,  because  the  Romans  called  this  peel 
liber,  and  later  applied  it  to  all  books,  however  written.  Romans 
rolled  up  their  peelings  and  called  the  roll  volumen,  whence  our 
volume.  The  Roman  Senate,  wrote  edicts  on  ivory  and  called 
the  plates  libri  elephanti. 

The  methods  of  conveying  ideas  by  symbols  are  divided  into 
metonomy,  synechdoche,  metaphor  and  enigma. 

Metonomy,  as  when  a  blood-stained  club  signifies  an  enemy 
killed,  a  crescent  to  denote  the  month,  as  among  the  Ojibwas. 
The  Dakotas  represent  battle  by  two  arrows  pointing  to  each 
other.     Metonomy  substitutes  one  thing  for  another. 

Synechdoche,  the  substitution  of  part  of  an  object  or  idea 

''D.  Pozzi,  Aryan  Philology,  1879. 


256  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

for  the  whole,  which  is  common  in  Indian  picture  writing,  as 
when  a  horse  shoe  signifies  horse,  a  turkey's  foot  for  the  turkey, 
hoof  prints  of  other  animals  for  the  animals  themselves,  small 
claws  for  the  black  bear  and  large  claws  for  the  grizzly.  To  go, 
to  come,  among  the  Ojibwas,  is  represented  by  the  soles  of  the 
feet.  To  run,  with  Mexicans,  Egyptians  and  Hittites,  was  ex- 
pressed by  pictures  of  legs  in  the  act  of  running.  A  human  head, 
among  the  Indians,  with  animal  or  other  object  below,  indicated  a 
personal  name. 

Metaphor.  The  Egyptian  mother  was  represented  by  a  vul- 
ture betause  this  bird  was  said  to  nourish  its  young  with  its  own 
blood;  a  king  was  a  bee  because  this  insect  was  subject  to 
monarchial  government;  a  priest  was  a  jackal  to  indicate  his 
watchfulness  over  sacred  things. 

Enigma.  The  Egyptian  Ibis  represented  Thoth  Hermes,  the 
god,  owing  to  supposed  mystical  connection  between  the  bird  and 
the  deity.  A  lotus  stood  for  upper,  and  a  papyrus  lower,  Egypt. 
A  sphinx,  which  was  a  man's  head  on  a  lion's  body,  in  Egypt  rep- 
resented royalty,  or  intellectual  power,  combined  with  physical 
strength.     The  prevailing  idea  of  gods  and  kings. 

Abstract  ideas.  Ideographs  of  that  kind  were  frequent  and 
in  some  tribes  more  than  others.  Meat  in  a  pit  signified  plenty, 
as  the  Indians  covered  their  meat  in  caches  when  abundant.  Pic- 
tures of  ribs  or  a  bar  across  the  abdomen  meant  hunger.  A 
symbol  like  our  figure  three  indicates  cramps  in  the  stomach  or 
fatal  sickness.      Crossed  pipes  denote  peace. 

In  Egypt  the  sign  for  a  year  was  a  palm.  Ojibwas  indicate 
spring  by  trees  with  buds.  Winter  is  a  curved  line  with  zig- 
zags falling  from  it  for  snow.  Taylor"^  says  out  of  the  Semitic 
cuneiform  arose  the  Turanian  photo-Medic  syllabary,  and  on  the 
other  hand  the  alphabet  of  the  Aryan  Persians.  The  latter  was 
solved  acrologically,^*^  and  retains  images  of  the  syllabic  writing 
out  of  which  it  sprung. 

Linear  Babylonian  consists  of  ideograms  with  pictorial  re- 
mains. Later  the  arrow  or  wedge-shaped  character  came,  and 
convention  obliterated  the  pictures.     An  example  is  in  the  Assyr- 

"  Taylor,  Op.  Cit.,  Vol.  I,  p.  39 

**  Sayce,  Science  of  Language,  Vol.  I,  p.  321. 


LANGUAGE.  257 

ian  cuneiform  character  Kha,  a  fish,  from  the  older  Babylonian 
sketch,  which  looks  something  like  a  fish,  while  in  Linear  Baby- 
lonian the  fins  and  the  tails  are  more  distinct  and  resemble  the 
outlines  of  a  fish  as  drawn  by  the  Ojibwas  of  the  present  day. 
The  city  of  Nineveh  was  originally  a  collection  of  fishermen's 
huts,  so  a  fish  is  drawn  in  an  inclosure  and  represents  Nineveh. 

Taylor  suggests  that  some  dyssyllabic  Akkadian  words  were 
simply  worn  down  by  phonetic  decay  into  monosyllables,  which 
became  the  phonetic  values  of  the  characters.  Suppose  we  util- 
ized the  childish  da,  de,  di,  du,  dy,  into  combinations  of  dodo, 
dido,  dady,  etc.,  the  original  syllables  having  no  value  by  them- 
selves. The  original  Babylonian  is  traced  to  the  twenty-seventh 
century  B.  C,  and  the  oldest  Akkadian,  by  Sayce,  to  3000  B.  C. 

Another  syllabary  called  the  Hittite  is  traced  by  Major  Con- 
dor^^  as  non-Semitic,  and,  like  the  Tartar  or  Turkic  tribes,  the 
Hittites  were  first  referred  to  by  Sargon  about  1900  B.  C. 

The  names  of  persons  were  originally  single,  as  in  Hebrew 
bible  geneologies,  also  in  Egypt,  Syria,  Persia,  Greece,  Italy  and 
among  the  Celts  and  Teutons.  All  such  names  were  originally 
significant,  usually  of  some  circumstance  of  birth  or  some  senti- 
ment, and  among  the  North  American  Indians  they  were  often 
indecent,  and  a  new  name  might  be  imparted  at  any  time,  as 
among  the  Cheyennes  a  cut-off  finger  caused  one  to  be  called 
tama-atse,  which  was  afterwards  changed  to  mimisit,  on  account 
of  his  big  voice. 

The  Roman  named  after  occupations,  as  potsherd,  or  a  pecu- 
liarity,, as  a  long  nose,  and  many  Celtic  and  Teutonic  names 
brought  in  the  deity  Gottfried,  Godwin,  or  spirits,  as  Elfic  (elf 
king). 

Later  the  Romans  were  divided  into  clans,  or  gentes,  subdi- 
vided into  families.  Thus  in  the  gens  Cornelia  were  the  families 
Scipiones,  etc.  Each  citizen  had  three  names,  the  prsenonmen, 
or  first  name,  which  was  the  individual  name,  the  clan  or  second 
name  and  the  family  name  was  third,  the  cognomen,  and  there  was 
a  distinctive  name.  The  Publias  Cornelias  Scipio  was  of  the 
Cornelia  gens  and  Scipiones  family,  and  Publius  was  his  indi- 
vidual, or  what  is  now  called  his  Christian  name.  The  agnomen 
^*  Journal-Trans.,  Vict.  Inst,  1889. 


258  THE    EVOLUTION    OE    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

or  honorary  title  of  Africanus  was  added  for  his  "carrying  the 
war  into  Africa"  against  the  Carthaginians.  LseHus  CorneHiis 
Scipio  Asiaticus  was  his  brother.  The  Senate  granted  German- 
icus  to  the  elder  Drusus  and  his  posterity. 

Mythological  childishness  is  associated  with  names  by  primi- 
tive peoples,  thus  the  American  Indian  may  know  that  his  grand- 
father's name  was  Running  Wolf,  but  as  he  has  known  nothing  of 
his  great-grandfather's  personality  except  that  he  was  called 
Raccoon,  that  savage  is  likely  to  imagine  that  he  descends  from 
a  real  raccoon  animal. 

The  English  and  Welsh  registry  lists  show  that  Smith  is  the 
commonest  name  in  the  kingdom,  being  one  of  seventy-three  of 
the  population.  The  ancient  armorer  was  a  skilled  mechanic  and 
proud  of  his  occupation  as  an  armor  smith ;  he  ranked  with  silver 
smiths,  all  of  whom  naturally  adopted  the  names  of  the  occupa- 
tions by  command  of  feudal  barons  who  could  trace  their  sub- 
jects better  for  taxation  purposes  through  compelling  them  to 
adopt  family  names,  or  John  the  Smith  and  Robert  the  Clerk, 
eventually  came  to  be  known  as  such,  and  the  confusion  was 
added  to  by  the  old  custom  of  taking  as  a  surname  Johnson  or 
Smithson,  Robertson,  Clarkson,  according  as  the  son  was  named 
after  the  father's  first  name  or  his  occupation,  with  the  affixed 
word  son.     Jones  is  commonly  Welsh,  and  is  the  same  as  John. 

Analysis  of  the  1855  registry  shows  among  the  fifty  common- 
est names  that  34  per  cent  are  named  from  occupations,  30  per 
cent  are  named  from  corrupted  first  names  by  their  phonetic  cor- 
ruption, abbreviation^,  or  the  affix  son  and  sometimes  with  all  of 
these  changes.  Eight  per  cent  are  named  from  localities,  and  8 
per  cent  from  colors. 

The  commonest  names  in  England,  from  the  registry  of  1855, 
are  as  follows :  Smith,  Jones,  Williams,  Taylor,  Davies,  Brown, 
Thomas,  Evans,  Roberts,  Johnson,  Wilson,  Robinson,  Wright, 
Wood,  Thompson,  Hall,  Green,  Walker,  Hughes,  Edwards,  Lewis, 
White,  Tanner,  Jackson,  Hill,  Harris,  Clark,  Cooper,  Harrison, 
Warden,  Martin,  Baker,  Davis,  Morris,  James,  King,  Morgan, 
Allen,  Moore,  Parker,  Clarke,  Cook,  Price,  Phillips,  Shaw,  Ben- 
nett, Lee,  Watson,  Griffiths,  Chester. 

The  first  is  the  most  numerous,  there  being  one  Smith  in  73  of 


LANGUAGE.  259 

the  population,  the  Chesters,  Roman  for  camps,  being  one  in  551. 

Campbell  of  Scotland  is  plainly  from  campo  bello  of  Italy,  or 
beautiful  country,  and  the  same  meaning  is  contracted  into  Beau- 
champ,  from  beau  champs  of  the  Norman  French.  In  Spain  the 
son  inherits  names  from  both  parents,  or  may  choose  which  one 
he  pleases.  Hereditary  surnames  began  in  England  in  the  four- 
teenth century.  Many  adopted  names  from  localities,  and  pre- 
fixed d  or  o  as  John  o'Groat.  Some  were  named  from  animals, 
probably  from  coats  of  arms  of  the  barons  they  followed,  many 
from  occupations,  and  among  all  of  these  are  obsolete  words  the 
original  meaning  of  which  has  been  lost.  Smith  meant  to  smite 
in  English,  and  included  wheel-wrights,  carpenters,  masons,  and 
smiters  in  general,  the  German  Schmidt  included  armorers.  Per- 
sonal characters  gave  names  as  colors,  brown,  black,  white,  green 
and  red,  the  latter  was  read,  reed,  or  reid,  in  old  spelling.  Alfred 
meant  all  peace.  Patience,  Prudence,  Faithful,  Thankful  were 
at  one  time  popular.  Formerly  an  act  of  parliament  was  required 
to  change  names,  but  in  England  it  is  now  decided  that  one  can 
change  his  name  at  will.  Americans  adhere  to  the  old  English 
■custom  of  seeking  legal  sanction  for  changing  names. 

The  ruder  population  of  Europe  continued  to  use  single  names. 
There  were  a  few  surnames  in  England  before  the  Norman  inva- 
sion. As  many  had  the  same  name  a  further  designation  was 
needed.  Christianity  displaced  old  heathen  names  by  names 
from  the  bible,  and  sometimes  to  save  trouble  whole  companies 
were  given  the  same  name  in  baptism.  At  first  it  was  not  com- 
mon to  transmit  the  surname  from  father  to  son,  but  in  the 
twelfth  century  persons  of  distinction  took  surnames  and  of 
course  it  became  fashionable  to  adopt  them.  Henry  I.  had  a 
natural  son  upon  whom  he  conferred  the  name  Fitz  Roy,  or  son 
of  the  king,  fitz  being  a  corruption  of  fils.  Petrovitch,  Ivano- 
vitch  has  the  same  value.  Mac  is  Gaelic  Scotch  and  Irish  for  son, 
and  O  is  Irish  for  grandson  and  the  Welsh  prefix  ap,  and  they 
even  use  a  string  of  aps,  as  ap  Griffith,  ap  David,  ap  Jenkin,  ap 
Hugh,  ap  Morgan,  ap  Owen.  Griffith  Williams  was  a"  means  of 
stating  that  Griffith  was  the  son  of  William,  from  which  origi- 
nated many  names  ending  in  s.  Adamson,  Johnson,  were  also 
*"  Lower,  English  Surnames,  1842,  and  Ferguson,  same,  1858. 


26o  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

used  until  finally  fixed  in  a  family.  Instead  of  John,  the  son  of 
Adam,  and  Adam  the  son  of  John  grew  up  John  Adamson,  the 
family  surname,  and  thus  many  Christian  names  became  sur- 
names. 

There  is  no  w  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  or  Maeso-Gothic  alphabets, 
hence  such  words  as  "Villiam  vat  of  it,"  and  veil  for  well.  The 
aw  sound  of  a  is  also  from  old  Fren-ch,  but  some  words  undergo 
strange  mutations,  as  vases  pronounced  wahses  and  vestcoats  wes- 
kits.  There  is  no  w  in  French  and  so  the  Frenchmen  pronounce 
Washington  Vashington,  or  by  extra  effort  Guashington,  and  his 
Guilliame  we  render  into  William. 

Parallel  to  the  word  Hindu  passing  to  the  Greek  through 
Persia,  and  thence  to  us  with  the  H  left  off,  the  London  cockney 
dialect  is  said  to  be  an  attempt  to  imitate  the  Norman  French  by 
omitting  the  h,  a  habit  assigned  to  Greek  cockneys  who  passed  it 
to  all  the  Latin  tongues,  thence  through  French  it  found  its  way 
to  Whitechapel  and  Threadneedle  streets,  and  to  Windsor  and 
Buckingham  palaces.  And  apparently  by  way  of  revenge  the 
common  people  balanced  matters  by  putting  an  h  on  every  exposed 
vowel.  Hedge  originally  meant  edge,  or  boundary.  Hear  was 
ear,  hearing  was  earing.  Hall  was  a  place  for  all,  and  the  ac- 
cepted omissions  of  h  are  'onerable,  'umble,  'umor,  'eir,  'are,  'ow, 
'onest,  'otel,  'ostler,  'arbor,  'oo,  'andiron. 

If  you  are  right  handed  the  speech  faculty  is  situated  in  your 
left  brain  a  little  forward  of  the  upper  part  of  your  ear.  How 
do  we  know" this?  By  the  very  simple  fact  that  an  injury  of  that 
part  of  the  brain  causes  loss  of  the  ability  to  use  language.  If 
you  are  left  handed  the  speech  centre  is  in  your  right  brain.  This 
may  be  accounted  for  by  gesticulations,  mainly  by  the  right  hand^ 
having  preceded  vocal  language  millions  of  years,  and  the  speech 
faculty  was  grafted  upon  right  hand  gestures,  the  centres  for 
which  are  over  the  left  ear  and  above  and  behind  the  speech 
centre.  This  part  of  the  brain  is  called  the  symbolic  field  because 
in  that  region  is  the  control  of  the  voice  in  articulate  speech  and 
in  intelligent  gesticulation.  Some  of  this  association  of  speech 
and  gesture  centres  is  evident  in  the  motions  made  while  speak- 
ing, such  as  drumming  or  playing  with  the  fingers,  scratching 
the  head  to  help  the  thought  and  even  certain  monotonous  and 


LANGUAGE.  26t 

inappropriate  arm  movements  while  talking.  One  will  wave  his 
right  or  left  arm  up  and  down  and  sideways.  In  writing  the 
child  moves  the  tongue  as  do  some  when  cutting  with  scissors. 

Speech  helps  to  develop  the  fore  brain,  and  it  is  the  left  fore 
brain  that  is  the  more  important  intellectually,  just  in  front  of 
the  speech  centre,  and  as  the  majority  of  people  are  right  handed 
so  the  left  fore  brain  in  association  with  the  left  speech  centre  is 
connected  with  the  left  brain  centre  for  the  right  arm,  hand  and 
fingers  that  are  used  most  in  gestures. 

As  the  education  in  speech  depends  upon  hearing  and  the  eye- 
sight, the  latter  especially  for  reading,  then  both  the  arm  and 
speech  centres  in  the  symbolic  field  must  receive  nerve  connections 
/rom  the  optic  and  auditory  centres.  Where  writing  is  more 
the  habitual  means  of  expression  then  the  right  fingers  center  in 
the  left  brain  is  better  developed,  as  in  the  case  of  Addison  and 
Goldsmith.  But  when  the  speech  faculty  is  well  developed  there 
must  be  an  organic  basis  for  it  in  the  better  construction  of  that 
particular  part  of  the  brain. 

Laura  Bridgman,  the  blind  deaf  mute,  thought  in  terms  of 
gesture  and  in  her  dreams  she  moved  her  fingers  in  sign  words, 
hence  her  fingers  and  arm  centres  coupled  with  face  centres  for 
expression  were  main  thought  regions  in  her  brain.  In  others 
with  the  normal  faculties  thought  is  often  in  terms  of  the  lan- 
guage learned,  but  not  all  thought,  for  the  recalling  of  appear- 
ances can  be  independent  of  speech  ideas,  but  many  ideas  are  in 
speech  terms,  as  when  one  thinks  in  German  or  in  French,  etc. 
It  is  not  necessary  that  all  his  thoughts  need  be  in  language,  many 
of  them  can  be  in  reading  terms,  and  probably  still  more  in  ges- 
ture or  expression  terms,  pictures,  heiroglyphs  practically. 

Language  merely  imports  the  capacity  for  higher  range  of 
thought.  It  is  likely  that  ancestral  languages  may  be  more  read- 
ily acquired  even  though  not  previously  heard,  because  the  brain 
adjustment  may  be  such  as  to  favor  its  acquisition.  For  example, 
one  who  had  French  ancestors  brought  up  in  an  English  envi- 
ronment spoke  English  excellently,  for  he  had  never  heard 
French,  but  when  later  in  life  he  was  among  Frenchmen  he 
learned  that  language  quickly  and  easily.  As  a  rule  where  chil- 
dren are  brought  up  among  foreigners  the  language  they  hear 


262  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

most  is  the  one  they  use.  It  is  stated,  however,  that  where  Ger- 
man and  French  are  equally  spoken  the  child  is  inclined  to  use 
German  more,  and  if  English  is  alternate  it  will  be  preferred  as 
admitting  of  quicker  thought  expression. 

The  baby's  movements  are  at  first  badly  regulated,  he  kicks, 
sprawls  and  throws  his  arms,  often  in  the  wrong  direction  when 
he  attempts  to  grasp  some  objects.  He  denotes  pain  and  pleasure 
by  merely  crying  and  laughing.  Little  by  little  the  infant  regu- 
lates his  movements  for  walking  and  handling,  and  acquires  the 
ability  of  pointing  at  or  motioning  away  persons,  denotes  pleas- 
ure by  words  and  smiles,  and  displeasure  by  shaking  his  head  or 
turning  away,  and  soon  he  begins  to  articulate  such  words  as  ''go 
way,"  "lemme  'lone,"  etc. 

An  important  inference  from  this  is  that  manual  training 
would  develop  the  symbolic  field  of  the  brain  and  afford  a  basis 
for  mental  development;  where  purely  linguistic  studies  would 
tend  to  create  inefficiency  by  crowding  the  speech  centre  with 
symbols  that  are  seldom  used,  comparable  to  the  differences  in 
education  that  exist  between  the  skilled  mechanical  engineer  and 
the  clownish  contortionist.  The  gymnast  is  not  a  watchmaker  or  a 
pianist,  nor  is  the  elocutionist  an  orator.  But  both  elocutionist 
and  orator  may  have  undeveloped  frontal  brains  and  in  their 
intellectual  poverty  make  use  of  phrases  in  emotional  rather  than 
rational  ways,  depending  upon  the  inability  of  many  hearers  to 
discern  jingle  from  sense. 

Nerves  concerned  in  speech  meet  in  the  speech  centre  of  the 
brain  in  the  insula  operculum,  and  according  to  which  region^ 
whether  in  front  or  behind,  is  injured  we  may  have  ataxic  aphasia, 
the  inability  to  speak  words,  though  we  may  remember  them,  but 
ideas  in  other  terms  may  remain  as  in  the  instance  of  an  inability 
to  remember  or  to  say  the  word  milk,  though  the  patient  may 
ask  for  "that  white  fluid  we  drink."  So  there  must  be  a  separate 
part  of  the  brain  for  more  generalized  ideas  than  where  names 
are  stored  up,  and  this  accords  with  C.  K.  Mills'  naming  centre 
doctrine. 

And  injury  of  the  brain  has  reduced  the  words  to  a  few  ex- 
clamations, or  to  such  absurd  expressions  as  "saw  my  leg  off," 
a  survival  of  an  old  college  song. 


LANGUAGE.  263 

There  may  be  agraphia  or  the  inabiHty  to  write  words  inde- 
pendently of  speech  integrity  or  impairment.  A  patient  with 
right  sided  paralysis  could  only  say  ''Aye,  aye,"  to  every  question, 
another  only  "O,  yes,"  and  still  another  "Toot,  toot."  He  was 
a  cornet  player.  Sometimes  there  may  be  word  blindness,  word 
deafness  and  complete  aphasia  in  the  same  person  without  par- 
alysis. Paraphasia  is  where  the  wrong  word  is  used  in  attempts 
at  speaking.  If  the  left  tempero-sphenoidal  is  injured  there  is 
word  deafness,  sensory  aphasia. 

Speech  derangements  are  of  various  sorts  and  assist  our 
knowledge  of  the  brain  workings.  When  there  is  dumbness  in 
the  course  of  hysteria  the  cause  can  be  found  in  cramp  of  the 
blood  vessels  supplying  the  speech  centre  at  the  root  of  the  low- 
est, third  frontal  convolution,  just  in  front  of  the  ear.  The  whis- 
pering trouble  in  hysteria  is  a  partial  paralysis  of  the  vocal  cords. 
When  coughing  propels  more  blood  to  the  head,  and  the  arteries 
in  the  speech  centre  are  thus  filled,  then  a  temporary  recovery  of 
the  voice  follows.  Hysterical  mutism  or  dumbness  sometimes 
comes  on  during  a  convulsion. 

The  word  hearing  centre  in  the  left  brain  extends  along  the 
upper  tempero-sphenoidal  convolution  at  the  brain  base  on  a  line 
backwards  from  the  forehead  behind  the  upper  part  of  the  ex- 
ternal ear.  Its  injury  induces  what  is  called  auditory  aphasia,  or 
inability  to  recollect  words  or  attach  any  meaning  to  them.  Para- 
phasia is  the  disorder  of  speech  where  the  wrong  word  is  spoken 
and  the  right  one  cannot  be  recalled,  an  incomplete  damage  to 
this  word  hearing  centre  may  be  the  cause  of  this  difficulty. 

The  word  speaking  centre  is  in  the  left  brain  at  the  base  of 
the  third  frontal  convolution,  in  front  of  the  ear.  Its  derange- 
ment prevents  words  being  articulated,  though  they  may  remain 
in  the  memory.  The  word  seeing  centre  is  located  in  the  back 
part  of  the  side  of  the  left  brain,  extending  from  the  posterior  tip 
forward  to  over  the  ear,  between  the  angular  and  cuneus  gyri. 

When  this  region  is  injured  there  is  inability  to  recollect 
printed  or  written  words,  though  the  words  themselves  may  be  re- 
membered and  the  ability  to  pronounce  them  may  remain. 

At  the  root  of  the  left  second  convolution  behind  the  temple 
is  the  motor  centre  for  writing,  damage  to  which  will  disable 
the  person  from  writing  or  figuring,  even  though  printed  and 


264  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

written  characters  may  be  recognized.    The  artist  depends  upon 
the  integrity  of  this  part  for  his  ability  to  make  pictures. 

Writing  is  often  affected  at  the  same  time  with  motor  aphasia. 
That  is,  when  a  person  is  disabled  from  speaking  from  loss  of 
ability  to  articulate  words  he  may,  also,  be  unable  to  write,  owing 
to  these  centres  adjoining. 

Trousseau*^  says  "the  greater  number  of  aphasics  are  par- 
alyzed in  the  right  hand  and  cannot  write,  and  if  they  acquire 
the  habit  of  writing  with  the  left  hand  it  is  easy  to  see  they  can- 
not trace  in  writing  many  more  words  than  they  can  express  in 
speech. 

The  world-blind  patient  may  be  figure-blind  also,  and  the  artist 
would  cease  to  understand  his  own  drawings  when  the  word- 
seeing  centre,  the  angular  gyrus,  is  invaded.  Some  are  able  to 
read  the  figure  3  but  not  the  word  three,  others  have  loss  of  mem- 
ory of  certain  printed  or  written  letters  or  words,  as  the  para- 
phasic  has  for  spoken  words.  Object  or  mind-blindness  is  the 
failure  to  identify  objects,  and  the  cuneus  gyrus  occipital  tip  or 
hindmost  part  of  the  brain  is  concerned  in  this  trouble.  One  may 
fail  to  see  with  half  of  the  eye  toward  the  nose  and  half  of  the 
other  eye  toward  the  temple,  the  outer  half  of  one  eye  and  inner 
half  of  the  other. 

The  musical  faculty  may  be  retained  with  aphasia.  One  case 
could  not  speak  but  could  sing  songs  with  the  words  correctly. 

Amimia  is  the  loss  of  the  ability  to  gesticulate,  as  to  nod  or 
shake  the  head  to  express  yes  or  no.  In  paramimia  the  gestures 
are  used  wrongly. 

The  power  of  emotional  expression  outlives  that  of  other  fac- 
ulties. 

Echolalia  is  the  repetition  of  anything  said ;  this  disorder  oc- 
curs in  some  persons. 

Some  insane  give  conventional  replies  as  "very  well,  thank 
you,"  with  very  little  other  ability  retained,  and  a  superstitious 
significance  may  be  attached  to  a  word.  The  agonizing  search 
for  a  name,  word  or  a  number  forgotten  is  called  onomatomania. 

Embololalia  is  the  affliction  of  involuntary  putting  in  mean- 
ingless words  or  syllables  like  hemming  and  hawing.  Kussmaul 
"  Clinique  Medicale,  p.  708. 


LANGUAGE.  265 

tells  of  a  general  who  put  mamma  between  every  three  or  four 
words. 

Logorrhoea  is  like  the  verbigeration  of  mania,  a  flow  of  words. 
Bradylalia  is  slowness  of  utterance  from  depressed  functions. 
Stuttering  and  stammering  are  faulty  regulated  speech.  In  pa- 
retic dementia  the  speech  is  slow  and  stumbling,  particularly  over 
the  letter  r,  which  is  difficult  to  pronounce. 

In  terminal  dementia  there  is  often  a  disposition  to  invent  new 
words  as  the  child  does,  and  it  is  noteworthy  that  in  the  infancy 
of  man  and  of  the  race  new  words  are  incessantly  invented  and 
forgotten  as  in  the  condition  of  destruction  of  the  intelligence  in 
the  course  of  dementia. 

The  loss  of  memory  of  words  occurring  with  advancing  age 
or  infirmities  are  first  for  proper  names,  special  or  concrete  nouns, 
while  abstract  nouns  and  general  terms  may  be  well  retained; 
such  words  as  yes  and  no  may  be  retained  when  all  else  is  lost, 
and  the  ability  to  swear  or  exclaim  is  quite  persistent,  equivalent 
to  the  growling  or  snarling  of  animals.  Kussmaul**-  continues  to 
be  the  standard  author  on  the  subject,  though  John  Wyllie*"  of 
Edinburgh  is  a  later  writer  of  a  good  work  of  reference. 

Chinese  has  some  traces  of  agglutinations  and  incipient  inflec- 
tion. Ancient  Greek  had  intonation  in  its  accents.  The  Aryan 
had  instances  of  vowel  inflection.  Some  Aryans  and  some  Sem- 
itic tongues  use  prefixes.  All  languages  have  connectives.  All 
languages  use  positional  grammar  to  some  extent.  Chinese  is 
one  syllabled  positional  and  intoning.  Japanese  is  agglutinative 
and  positional.  Zulu  inflects  by  prefixes.  Hebrew  inflects  by 
affixes  to  the  root.  English  is  both  monosyllabic  and  constructs 
sentences  by  connectives.  English  remains  to  some  extent  the 
power  of  combination  of  the  agglutinative  stage.  Thus  we  say 
railroad  or  railway  where  the  French  are  confined  to  chemin  de 
fer.  Steamboat  where  they  say  bateau  a  vapeur,  chambermaid 
where  they  say  femme  de  chambre.  The  Norman  French  curtailed 
this  compounding  of  words,  which  was  going  to  excess.  We  see 
the  ill  effects  of  this  excess  in  the  tendency  in  German.  A  few 
words  in  English  show  the  remains  of  former  inflection  which 

*^Kussmaul,  Treatise  on  Disturbances  of  Speech. 
^'The  Disorders  of  Speech,  1894. 


266  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

English  discards.  '*It  is  barely  possible  that  all  these  varieties  of 
language  formation,  the  monosyllabic,  the  agglutinative,  the  holo- 
phrastic,  the  inflective  by  prefix,  the  inflective  by  vowel  change, 
the  inflective  by  affix,  may  have  sprung  from  one  and  the  same 
original  tongue.  They  seem,  however,  to  follow  race  character- 
istics, and  they  may  have  originated  at  different  centres  in  spite 
of  the  fact  that  one  set  of  inflected  tongues,  the  Aryan,  can  be 
reduced  to  roots  of  one  syllable.  One  thing  is  certain,  there  is  a 
constant  tendency  to  word  variation  in  language,  and  there  have 
always  been  dialects.  Whitney  has  pointed  out  that  each  human 
being  has  a  language  to  himself.  His  part  of  the  mother  tongue 
is  not  identical  with  that  of  any  other.  Household  differs  from 
household,  tribe  from  tribe,  province  from  province.  From  this 
fact  with  sometimes  an  added  difference  in  origin,  or  some  his- 
toric happenings,  comes  the  existence  of  dialect. 

Change  in  language  comes  about  in  six  ways :  Change  in  the 
form  of  words,  in  their  meaning,  in  the  total  disappearance  of 
words,  the  loss  of  grammatical  form  once  had,  and  the  introduc- 
tion of  new  grammatical  forms.  Whitney  illustrates  the  first  two 
by  the  Greek  word  episkopos  changed  thus  in  form :  Latin  epi- 
scopus,  French  eveque,  Spanish  obispo,  Portuguese  bispo,  Danish 
bisp,  German  bischof.  Inflected  English  biscop,  English  bishop, 
Italian  vescovo,  while  the  person  meant  by  the  original  Greek,  a 
mere  superintendent  of  trembling  proselytes,  has  become  an  ec- 
clesiastical prince,  having  great  revenues  and  wielding  august  au- 
thority. 

Phonetic  decay  attacks  vowels  and  consonants.  Phonetic  con- 
venience of  ease  in  thinking  and  speaking  have  changed  language. 
Economy  in  utterance  lies,  like  gravity,  in  waiting  to  pull  down 
what  tradition  or  literary  prestige  cannot  build  up.  Unconscious 
changes  in  speech  are  made  from  generation  to  generation.  Syl- 
lables are  shortened,  stress  changed  from  one  syllable  to  another, 
compound  words  by  fusion  are  made  to  appear  simple,  the  vowel 
changes  called  in  German  Ablaut  and  Umlaut  are  developed, 
words  are  annexed  from  other  languages,  the  slang  terms  pro- 
duced by  ignorance  or  humor  are  adopted  into  the  language. 
There  are  variations  in  intonation  even  among  those  speaking  the 
same  language.     A  Scotchman  seems  to  an  Englishman  to  be 


LANGUAGE.  267 

always  asking  questions,  because  he  raises  the  pitch  of  his  voice 
toward  the  close  of  all  sentences. 

Grimm's  law  in  that  p,  b,  f,  in  Latin,  Greek  and  Sanskrit,  be- 
come in  Gothic  f ,  p,  b,  and  in  old  high  German  b,  f,  p.  Also,  that 
t,  d,  th,  in  Latin,  Greek  and  Sanskrit  became  in  Gothic  th,  t  and 
d,  and  in  old  high  German  d,  z,  t.  Also,  that  k,  g,  ch  in  Latin, 
Greek  and  Sanskrit  become  in  Gothic  k,  k,  g,  and  in  old  high 
German  g,  ch,  k. 

French  stress  is  uniform,  and  hence  intonation  is  monotonous, 
dramatic  verse  being  sing-song.  All  structure  is  the  result  of 
growth.  The  capacity  of  making  a  noun  do  duty  as  a  verb :  "he 
eyed  the  man,"  is  a  new  power  for  a  once  inflected  tongue.  Dia- 
lect construction  is  the  same  as  language  division,  separation  of 
races,  lack  of  fixity  of  language  owing  to  being  uncivilized,  neigh- 
boring tongues,  childish  delight  in  playing  with  language  pro- 
duce dialects.  Provincial  life,  lapses,  intermarriage,  slang  also 
make  dialects.  Many  expressions  and  pronunciations  once  com- 
mon in  England  are  found  now  in  Ireland,  and  in  Virginia  and 
the  Carolinas.  They  are  the  Elizabethan  English,  but  they  died 
out  in  the  England  of  the  Hanoverian  kings. 

When  dialects  drift  apart  and  become  separate  languages  the 
parts  that  remain  are  the  numerals,  pronouns,  family  relation 
terms  and  forms  of  the  verb  ''to  be."  Likenesses  sometime  re- 
main thousands  of  years  and  across  wide  continents  after  all  trace 
of  the  vocabularies  have  passed  away,  as  the  verb  "to  be"  wit- 
nesses. 

Agglutination  varies  from  a  scantiness  hardly  above  the  iso- 
lating language,  to  intricacy  approaching  inflection.  In  three 
orders :  By  simple  attachments  as  with  Finns,  of  holophrastic 
type  as  in  America,  and  with  some  vowel  inflections  and  conso- 
nantal change  by  assimilation,  as  in  Bantu  tongues. 

There  is  a  principle  of  symmetry  peculiar  to  each  type  of  lan- 
guage. That  of  the  monosyllabic  is  'ntonation,  though  all  do  not 
have  it.  That  of  the  Semitic  is  a  wonderful  euphonic  law  of 
vowel  change.    That  of  the  Aryan  is  the  law  of  symbolization. 

The  Agglutinative  tongues  of  Akkad,  of  Sumir  and  the  Hit- 
tite  confederacy  were  of  undoubted  antiquity.  The  races  using 
this  type  of  language,  that  were  not  subjected  to  the  influence 


268  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

of  civilization,  improved  their  speech  by  natural  processes  of  evo- 
lution, into  approximation  either  to  the  holophrastic  or  to  the 
inflective  type.  The  In-nu-it  is  an  instance  of  one  tendency,  the 
Australian  tribes  of  the  other.  The  Basque  agglutination  affixes 
approach  inflections.  Nor  will  it  do  to  say  that  grammatical  gen- 
der is  found  only  in  the  Aryan,  Semitic  and  Hamitic  tongues. 
There  is  something  of  the  sort  in  several  agglutinative  languages'. 
The  holophrastic  tends  to  reduplications.  In  the  Hamitic  is  the 
embryonic  Semitic,  a  line  of  development  from  monosyllables  up 
into  bilateral  and  trilateral  roots. 

The  ancient  Egyptian  is  a  low  type,  the  root  is  unchanged  and 
number  formations  are  by  affixes.  In  Semitic  there  is  the  highest 
trilateral  root  system  and  euphonious  vowel  interchange.  Assy- 
rian had  terminal  inflections  for  cases,  Hebrew  has  it  for  gender 
and  number.  Arabic  has  positional  grammar  like  Chinese.  The 
Semites  were  later  than  the  Akkads.  Egyptians  and  Hittites 
were  civilized  and  began  their  languages  at  a  proper  stage  of 
evolution,  but  it  is  evident  that  their  tongues  had  once  passed 
through  stages  identical  with  those  of  Basque  and  Bantu.  Aryans 
were  still  more  fortunate.  Their  language  fully  developed  its 
capabilities  before  they  reached  full  civil  organization  and  liter- 
ary expression.  Kelt,  Dane,  Norman  and  Aquitanian  gave  gifts 
yji  blood  and  language.  Through  French  both  language  and  lit- 
erature made  vast  gains.  French  was  an  analytic  development 
of  Latin  when  English  was  still  in  the  inflected  stage.  Hence  the 
ready  triumph  of  Norman  French  when  in  contact  with  the  other 
tongue.  It  made  English  even  more  analytic  thaii  itself,  and 
then  it  succumbed  to  English.  Still  its  literature  and  its  social 
prestige  have  always  largely  affected  both  English  literature  and 
usages.  English  is  the  heir  of  all  these  tongues,  Latin,  French, 
Low  German,  Scandinavian,  Keltic  and  all  other  lands  and 
tongues  are  used  when  necessary  to  name  new  things.  It  is  rich 
in  idioms,  dialects  and  synonyms.  Its  serious  lack  is  that  there 
is  no  rational  alphabet  and  that  English  is  very  far  from  being 
consistent  with  the  sound  of  spoken  English. 

Hutson's  resume  is  as  follows :  Languages  are  divisible  into 
the : 


LANGUAGE.  269 

1.  Monosyllabic,  each  sound  by  itself  and  relations  of  words 
expressed  by  position  and  tone. 

2.  Agglutinative,  where  simple  sounds  combined  by  mere 
juxtaposition  and  utterance  together  form  the  compound  idea. 

3.  Holophrastic  (telling  the  whole),  where  the  agglutinative 
plan  is  carried  to  the  length  of  putting  together  in  one  utterance 
all  the  ideas  it  is  intended  to  express. 

4.  Inflectional,  where  the  relations  of  words  to  one  another 
are  determined  by  some  change  in  the  form  of  words. 

5.  Analytic,  where  the  synthetic  methods  having  done  their 
full  work,  and  a  reaction  against  that  system  setting  in,  the  rela- 
tions of  words  to  one  another  are  expressed  by  small  particles  that 
serve  as  stepping  stones  for  thought. 

The  inflectional  is  the  climax  of  synthesis.  By  clashing  of 
diverse  inflected  tongues  and  by  phonetic  change  and  decay  lan- 
guage passed  from  the  highly  synthetic  form  of  inflected  speech  to 
easy  and  simple  analytical  forms.  English,  French  and  Persian 
for  instance  come  in  part  to  resemble  the  early  monosyllabic  type. 
It  is  polished,  an  instance  of  survival  of  the  fittest.  No  human 
being  is  born  with  speech,  he  is  born  only  with  the  faculty  for 
speaking,  and  must  learn  to  do  so  from  those  around  him.  An 
English  child  in  China  learns  Chinese ;  speech,  then,  is  not  innate, 
but  acquired,  it  is  social.  The  child  that  grows  up  among  wild 
beasts  will  not  speak  any  language.  , 

While  Greek,  German  and  English  agreed  in  keeping  nearly 
the  same  word  for  the  girl  child  Thiigater,  Tochter  and  Daugh- 
ter, Latin  lost  the  word  and  used  filia,  the  feminine  for  filius, 
its  word  for  son.  On  the  other  hand,  while  Latin  kept  a  word  for 
father's  brother  Patruus  and  another  for  mother's  brother  Avun- 
culus, English  has  kept  only  the  ambiguous  word  uncle. 

By  the  process  of  exuviation  from  the  primitive  method  of 
naming  all  relations  this  throws  light  on  the  condensing  process 
of  one  name  taking  the  place  of  several  former  words. 

It  was  Home  Tooke  who  first  made  the  guess  that  the  endings 
of  nouns,  adjectives  and  verbs  once  had  an  independent  life  of 
their  own. 

In  words,  says  Fred  W.  Farrar,  we  find  the  biological  laws 
of  *'the  struggle  for  existence,  the  importance  of  intermediate 


270  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

types,  the  perpetuation  of  accidental  divergences,  the  powerful 
effects  of  infinitessimal  changes  long  continued ;  above  all,  the 
beautiful  law  of  analogy,  the  law  which  shows  that  there  is  unity 
in  perpetual  variety." 

In  French  and  English  there  are  many  thousand  words  almost 
identical  in  either  form  or  sound : 

Pronouncer,  imiter,  avancer,  commencer,  compter  are  plain  to 
the  English  eye,  and  by  pronouncing  k  as  in  old  English  the 
French  canif  becomes  knife. 

So  bread,  butter  and  cheese,  in  the  German  Brod,  Butter  and 
Kase  show  the  relationship  of  English  and  German,  and  thou- 
sands of  other  words  are  more  or  less  the  same. 

In  all  the  inflected  languages  the  endings  of  nouns  vary  so 
greatly  as  to  have  made  it  necessary  for  the  grammarian  to  dis- 
tribute nouns  into  various  classes  called  declensions,  each  being 
made  up  of  nouns  that  use  the  same  inflection.  The  same  system 
of  endings  was  applied  to  pronouns,  adjectives  and  verbs,  and 
in  the  verbs  the  various  orders  of  inflections  were  classified  by 
the  grammarian  as  conjugations. 

The  original  roots  found  by  philologists  are  of  the  simplest 
structure,  and  no  doubt  must  have  passed  through  the  stage  of 
agglutination  before  they  began  to  develop  the  more  fruitful 
forms  of  inflection,  these  being  the  result  of  attrition  and  pho- 
netic change  and  decay  through  the  principle  of  unconscious  econ- 
omy of  effort  in  utterance.  Aryans  developed  both  forms  of  in- 
flection, that  by  terminations  as  well  as  by  vowel  change.  Semitic 
races,  when  they  passed  beyond  this  agglutinative  stage,  clung  to 
the  internal  method  of  inflection  and  based  the  whole  structure  of 
their  language  on  so  doing. 

Being  slow  in  developing  civilization,  the  Aryans  escaped  the 
crystallization  that  earlier  civilization  entails. 

But  some  credit  is  due  to  the  innate  genius  of  a  race  for  this 
result.  The  Aryans  were  destined  to  be  worthy  of  their  high 
position  as  the  ultimate  masters  of  other  races  and  of  the  forces 
of  nature.** 

Children  and  rustics  may  drawl  and  prolong  one  syllable  into 
two,  and  some  children  have  to  be  broken  of  the  habit  of  drawling 
**  Hutson,  The  Study  of  Languages,  p.  50. 


LANGUAGE.  27I 

wa-all,  boa-ard,  fa-an,  etc.  Sta-at,  bo-ot,  etc.,  are  adult  instances. 
The  Mountaineer  Crackers  drawl  thus  and  maybe  the  Yankee 
whine  is    from  similar  peculiarities  of  speech. 

Even  in  the  origination  of  any  existing  language  there  must 
have  been  contact  of  tribes  and  races  and  a  separation  among 
tribal  units  gave  way  to  some  force  impelling  unity. 

Exogamy  impelled  mating  with  wives  of  another  tribe,  and 
hence  the  evils  of  inbreeding  and  rival  contentions  for  sweethearts 
in  the  same  tribe  were  escaped.  Often  tribes  were  practically 
families,  so  marrying  out  of  the  tribe  was  as  natural  as  marrying 
out  of  one's  family.  Hence  dialects  arose  with  masculine  and 
feminine  forms  of  speech.  The  Burmese  has  this  distinction. 
Disagreements  between  sex  and  gender  are  explained  by  this. 

Language  is  a  growth  and  cannot  be  artificially  constructed 
into  an  universal  tongue.  The  tendency  of  all  language  is  from 
simple  roots  to  synthesis  and  by  disintegration  and  substitution 
from  synthesis  to  analysis.  By  phonetic  decay  the  tendency  is  to 
analytic  structure. 

Semitic  and  Aryan  roots  are  wholly  diverse.  Agglutinative 
tongues  are  very  diverse  in  structure  and  origin.  Monosyllabic 
dialects  cannot  be  classified  as  having  identical  origin. 

Civilization  brings  development  of  a  language  to  a  standstill. 
Some  races  reached  this  plane  during  their  monosyllabic  stage, 
others  at  the  agglutinative,  and  others  in  the  inflected  stage. 
These  are  the  yellow  races,  the  Chinese  having  reached  civiliza- 
tion before  their  language  had  grown  out  of  the  monosyllabic 
stage.  The  Tartars  had  attained  agglutinative  and  the  Osmanli 
Turks  had  climbed  to  a  sort  of  inflection. 

The  white  races  were  capable  of  indefinitely  continuing  and 
perfecting  *a  civilization  carried  up  the  highest  forms  of  inflec- 
tion in  the  time  of  their  long  youth,  while  they  remained  aloof 
from  the  centre  of  civilization. 

English  is  cursed  with  atrocious  spelling,  but  not  forever.  It 
comes  from  its  complex  origin. 

Man  existed  in  America  in  the  closing  of  the  quaternary  pe- 
riod, chipped  arrow  heads  have  been  found  beneath  elephant  bones 
in  the  Missouri  Valley. 


272  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

A  long  compound  idea  being  bundled  up  in  one  utterance  is 
holphrastic  and  a  reduplication  of  the  same  syllable  expresses  the 
plural. 

The  holophrastic  languages  all  belong  to  the  American  conti- 
nent and  to  one  race,  though  that  consists  of  many  tribes. 

Hutson"*"'  compares  Akkad,  Finnish  and  Magyar  as  similar 
Turanian  tongues,  and  speaks  of  both  Akkadi  and  Sumeri  as  Tu- 
ranian near  the  mouth  of  the  Euphrates  4000  years  B.  C.  That 
the  Akkads  used  papyryi  or  parchment  and  hieroglyphs  as  script. 
When  the  Akkads  came  down  into  the  plains  they  exchanged  the 
smoother  writing  material  for  clay  and  used  cuneiform  char- 
acters. 

They  extended  from  the  Mountains  of  Elam  to  the  Island 
of  Cyprus,  and  may  have  formed  the  basis  of  Egyptian  civiliza- 
tion, possibly  the  Etruscans.  Eridu  was  a  great  commercial  city. 
Akkad  and  Sumeri  were  agglutinative  tongues.  The  Yakut,  a 
Turkish  tongue  on  Siberian  seas,  has  no  verb.  Sit  means  one 
concerned  in  whatever  the  root  signifies,  like  ''enger"  in  French, 
boulenger,  etc.;  ati  means  wares,  ati-sit  thus  means  a  merchant, 
ayi-sit  a  creator. 

PowelP*^  summarizes  thus : 

Combination.  Two  or  more  words  may  be  united  to  form  a 
new  one,  and  four  methods  or  stages  of  combination  may  be 
noted. 

(a)  By  juxtaposition,  two  words  placed  together,  and  yet 
remain  distinct  words.  In  Chinese  the  roots  giving  no  clue  to  the 
sense  of  united  words. 

(b)  By  compounding  two  words  into  one,  where  in  which 
case  the  original  naming  of  roots  is  not  changed :  house-top  rain- 
bow, tell-tale.  » 

(c)  By  agglutination,  where  one  or  more  of  the  elements 
may  be  changed,  but  the  elements  are  fused  together:  truthful, 
holiday. 

(d)  By  inflection,  greater  modification  of  the  roots  by  com- 

*^  Hutson,  Op.  Git.,  p.  107. 

^'^  Bureau  Eth.  Rep.,  1879  to  1880,  Vol.  I,  J.  W.   Powell  on  Evolution  of 
Language . 


LANGUAGE.  273 

bination  to  form  new  words,  conjugations  and  declensions. 

These  methods  run  into  each  other : 

Compound  words  when  two  or  more  unchanged  words  form 
one. 

Agglutinative  when  slight  change  occurs  in  roots. 

Inflected  when  greater  change  occurs  in  roots. 

In  these  inflections  there  is  a  theme  or  root  and  a  formative 
element,  the  latter  to  qualify  or  define  them,  to  indicate  mode, 
tense,  number,  gender  of  verbs  and  other  parts  of  speech. 

]\Iallery  classifies  language  as  : 

I.  Isolating  languages,  words  arranged  together  without 
change,  form  or  grammatical  construction.  Spoken  by  Chinese, 
Siamese,  Burmese. 

II.  Inflecting  languages.  Each  word  shows  by  its,  own  form 
its  relation  to  the  idea  which  it  represents.  Aryans:  Sanskrit, 
Latin,  Gothic. 

III.  Agglutinative:  Formed  by  suffixes  to  words  modify- 
ing and  limiting  it.  Finns,  Turks  and  many  Ncfrth  Asiatic 
tribes. 

IV.  Incorporative  languages  :  Leading  word  split  and  modi- 
fier inserted,  prefixed  or  suffixed,  so  the  whole  sentence  sounds 
as  one  word.  Most  American  tribes,  Basque  also.  Causes  of 
changes  in  languages,  war  and  migration. 

The  simpler  these  conditions  of  life  the  more  accurately  does 
similarity  of  language  testify  kinship  of  blood. 

The  deduction  could  be  made  from  considering  the  history  of 
language  creation  that  the  only  rational  method  of  studying  a 
foreign  language  is  that  of  Richard  S.  Rosenthal.  Sentences-  are 
learned  rather  than  isolated  words.  The  words  are  divided  into 
necessary  and  unnecessary  ones.  Shakespeare  used  12,000  words, 
Milton  11,000,  Carlyle  9,000;  Prendergast  estimated  that  600 
words  sufficed  the  generality  of  mankind,  and  Bayard  Taylor  es- 
timated that  1,500  were  all  that  were  needed  for  practical  pur- 
poses. Rosenthal  thinks  that  4,000  are  used  in  common  transac- 
tions. He  advises  using  these  sentences  until  you  think  in  the 
foreign  languages.  All  these  sentences  are  practical  phrases  based 
upon  actual  occurrences  of  every-day  life.  He  also  thinks  that 
study  should  be  aloud  in  mastering  a  language. 


274  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND, 

The  visualization  process  of  teaching  children  to  recognize 
words  before  learning  their  letters  is  also  in  accordance  with 
nature,  as  man  has  acquired  his  familiarity  with  written  symbols 
first  as  mere  pictures  and  representations  of  pictures,^  and  cer- 
tainly so  far  as  English  is  concerned  the  discordant  spelling  makes 
the  word  a  mere  symbol  composed  of  letters  often  having  little 
connection  with  the  pronunciation.  We  are  frequently  forced  to 
write  a  word  and  examine  it  ''to  see  how  it  looks"  before  being 
able  to  say  if  the  spelling  is  correct  or  not. 

If  Shakespeare  could  stand  on  our  stage  today  he  would  ap- 
pear to  talk  to  us  in  an  unknown  tongue,  though  his  writing  is 
as  intelligible  to  us  as  then,  says  John  Peile. 

"Literature  was  assailed  in  its  downfall  by  enemies  from 
within  as  well  as  from  without.  A  prepossession  against  secular 
learning  had  takeri  hold  of  those  ecclesiasts  who  gave  the  tone 
to  the  rest.  It  was  inculcated  in  the  most  extravagant  degree  by 
Gregory  I,  the  founder  in  a  great  measure  of  the  papal  supre- 
macy and  the  chief  authority  in  the  dark  ages.  It  is  even  found 
in  Alcuin,  to  whom  so  much  is  due ;  and  it  gave  way  very  grad- 
ually in  the  revival  of  literature.  In  some  of  the  monastic 
foundations,  especially  in  that  of  Isidore,  though  himself  a  man 
of  considerable  learning,  the  perusal  of  the  heathen  authors  was 
prohibited."*^.  The  tenacity  of  the  clergy  for  the  Latin  liturgy 
and  sacred  writings  preserved  grammatical  learning  while  it  did 
not  suppress  superstition. 

Prof.  Cross,  of  Yale,"*^  points  out  instances  of  reversion  and 
survival  of  the  oscillations  between  romance  and  realism.  The 
novel  growing  by  selection,  rejection,  addition  and  modification. 

So  words  and  their  uses  develop,  decay  and  resolve  into  new 
combinations  subject  to  the  law  of  survival  of  the  fittest.  Lan- 
guage changes  while  literature  tries  to  fix  it  and  succeeds  to  some 
extent  and  the  writings  of  great  authors  help  largely  in  this,  the 
styles  of  authorship  and  what  will  be  popular  reading  likewise 
undergo  development,  retrogradation  and  reappearance  in  dif- 
ferent forms. 

"Hallam,  Op.  Cit.,  pt.  i.  Vol.  I,  Ch.  I. 
**  The  Development  of  the  English  Novel. 


LANGUAGE.  275 

The  dawning  of  history  is  comparable  to  the  fifth-year  dawn 
of  memory  in  the  child,  the  awakening  of  consciousness  that  can 
be  remembered. 

Analogy  would  indicate  that  the  race  can  record  the  first 
boasts  of  its  kings,  the  means  of  trickery  by  its  priests,  finally 
its  commerce  and  history,  and  later  a  literature  of  science,  art 
and  fiction,  so  the  human  being  in  childhood  awakes  to  brain 
records  of  events,  recalls  its  sports  and  exploits  and  eventually 
the  intellectual  consciousness  may,  but  does  not  always,  grow 
more  acute  and  active.  The  brain  may  be  said  to  begin  perman- 
ent special  records  at  the  memory  age  where  impressions  were 
merely  general  before. 

The  step  by  step  progress  of  inventions,  discoveries  and  of  in- 
telligence can  be  realized  in  the  building  up  of  the  printers'  art 
from  block  letters  to  its  present  enormous  state  of  development. 

The  invention  of  paper  to  replace  parchment  and  the  desire 
to  be  able  to  avoid  employing  a  secretary  for  private  correspond- 
ence led  to  more  extensive  literary  polish.  The  earliest  linen 
paper  letter  is  mentioned  by  Mabillon  as  one  from  Joinville  to 
St.  Louis,  older  than  1770.  Cotton  paper  later  became  more 
general 

We  test  the  correctness  of  our  spelling  by  scrutinizing  the 
written  word  to  "see  whether  it  looks  right,"  so  it  is  a  hieroglyph 
after  all  and  any  other  sort  of  symbol  would  answer  as  well  if 
committed  to  memory.  Our  letters  seem  to  afford  us  a  more 
convenient  means  of  creating  symbols  that  stand  for  words,  but 
they  are  mere  approximations  when  we  consider  the  vast  differ- 
ence between  the  spelling  and  pronunciation  acquired  by  some 
words. 

We  learn  everything  as  symbols,  we  read  the  expressions  on 
the  faces  of  others  as  heiroglyphics  standing  for  certain  moods, 
and  are  often  mistaken,  just  as  we  are  in  words  made  of  letters. 

We  cannot  and  do  not  try  to  analyze  what  we  see  or  hear  into 
components  when  we  observe  or  listen  ordinarily,  life  is  too  short  | 
for  any  such  attempt.  We  grasp  the  whole  idea,  more  or  less  cor- 
rectly in  the  single  view  or  sound,  just  as  the  Chinaman  reads 
his  marks  and  the  phonograph  diaphragm  gathers  together  the 
complex  vibrations  of  the  line  into  a  familiar  sound  which  our 


276  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

auditory  nerve  then  translates  into  other  vibrations,  and  the  brain 
center  recognizes  these  vibrations  as  standing  for  a  certain  idea 
or  memory. 

Miiller  cites  the  vocabulary  of  the  Tagan  Fuegians  of  30,000 
words  against  the  small  number  of  words  and  ideas  in  the  ordi- 
nary vocabulary  of  the  English  peasant  as  evidence  against  the 
Fuegians  having  savage  ancestry.  The  savage  may  have  an  ab- 
surd number  of  useless  words  to  express  an  idea  which  the  peas- 
ant can  make  known  by  one  word. 

In  the  Sanskrit  and  Persian  there  are  words  scarcely  needing 
translation  into  English;  they  are  pader,  mader,  sunu,  dokhter, 
brader,  manp,  eyeumen,  the  eye,  brouwa,  the  eyebrow,  nasa,  the 
nose,  hrti,  the  heart,  stara  a  star,  arrivi  a  river,  ghau,  a  cow, 
sarpam,  a  serpent.  In  Persian  we  have  the  explanation  of  behter 
or  the  comparative  better  having  originated  from  the  positive 
beh  or  good,  which  latter  word  we  lost  while  retaining  the  other. 

Muller  mentions  the  Oxford  dictionary  as  containing  250,000 
words,  which,  with  ten  changes  by  declination,  conjugation  or 
degrees  of  comparison,  you  have  in  English  alone  two  and  a  half 
million  words,  but  a  poet  is  very  eloquent  who  uses  10,000  words; 
he  then  digresses  to  note  the  30,000  or  more  used  by  some  sav- 
ages, of  which  we  may  say  the  multitude  are  useless,  and  in  the 
fifth  century  Sanskrit  was  analyzed  into  2,000  roots,  but  by 
Miiller's  closer  scrutiny  he  cuts  these  down  to  800,  and  these 
sounds  became  the  signs  not  only  of  emotions,  but  of  concepts, 
for  all  roots  are  expressive  of  concepts,  as  that  milk,  snow  and 
chalk  are  white.  He  says  that  in  some  cases  a  concept  is  a  mere 
shadow  of  a  number  of  percepts,  as  when  we  speak  of  oaks, 
beeches  and  firs  as  trees,  but  suppose  we  had  no  such  names  as 
black,  white  and  tree,  where  would  the  concept  be?  If  we  ex- 
amine these  800  roots  carefully  we  find  they  do  not  represent  an 
equal  number  of  concepts.  There  are,  for  instance,  about  seven- 
teen roots,  all  meaning  to  plait,  to  weave,  to  sew,  to  bind,  to 
unite ;  about  thirty  roots,  all  meaning  to  crush,  to  pound,  to  de- 
stroy, to  waste,  to  rub,  to  smooth ;  about  seventeen  meaning  to 
cut,  to  divide,  and  so  on.  He  believes  the  original  meaning  of 
roots  was  always  special,  but  became  generalized  by  usage, 
though  certain  generalized  became  specialized  also.     So  he  re- 


LANGUAGE.  277 

duces  the  800  roots  to  121  concepts,  which  are  the  rivers  that  feed 
the  whole  ocean  of  thought  and  speech. 


CHAPTER  IX. 
HUNGER  AND  LOVE. 

The  amcmnt  and  kind  of  food  attainable  not  only  affects  the 
size  of  the  animal  but  also  determines  and  modifies  vital  func- 
tions. A  hydroid  medusa  can  be  induced  by  lack  of  nourishment 
to  assume  the  polyp  form,  that  is  revert  to  or  degenerate  into 
the  larval  form  of  the  species/  Hunter  changed  the  stomach  of  a 
gull  into  a  gizzard  by  a  change  of  food.^  Some  woodpeckers 
accidentally  found  sap  of  a  nourishing  nature  in  holes  they  bored 
to  get  at  insects,  and  sap  finally  became  the  object  instead  of  the 
incident  of  their  search  and  the  sap-sucker  species  was  created. 
Bee-eaters  are  a  family  of  picarian  birds,  the  sexes  being  alike  in 
color,  and  this  liking  for  bees  must  have  been  acquired.  While 
owls  have  become  night  prowlers  by  evolution,  burrowing  owls 
get  their  food  in  the  day  time.  They  live  often  in  a  marmot  bur- 
row with  snakes  and  feed  on  the  young  marmots.  The  Mexican 
tree  porcupines  are  not  known  to  drink  water.  Some  animals  are 
great  feeders  and  others  consume  very  little  food.  The  horned 
lizard  is  a  small  feeder  and  is  capable  of  long  fasts  and  is  sup^ 
posed  never  to  drink.  But  an  insect  that  did  not  eat  at  all  would 
seem  to  be  impossible  were  it  not  that  the  May-fly  lives  but  a  few 
days  and  has  no  mouth.  Its  larvae  feed  on  minute  plants  and  are 
free  swimmers.  Their  evolution  seems  to  be  arrested  by  faulty 
development.  Among  apparent  caprices  of  feeding  it  is  said  that 
at  Aden  the  natives  can  swim  in  the  open  sea  without  fear  of 
sharks  when  a  European  would  be  instantly  devoured.  This 
suggests  the  alleged  instance  of  wolves  refusing  to  eat  the  corpses 
of  the  Mexican  soldiers  during  the  war  of  the  United  States  with 
Mexico,  while  the  American  soldiers  were  always  eaten,  the  rea- 
son being  found  in  the  saturation  of  the  Mexicans  with  their 
favorite  red  pepper  addition  to  all  their  dishes.     The  Russian 

^  Hincks,  Allman  and  Schneider,  Semper,  p.  (>^. 

^  Semper,  p.  68. 

278 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE. 


279 


wolves  are  less  particular  for  they  tear  to  pieces  and  try  to  eat 
anything  thrown  to  them  by  persons  trying  to  escape  from  them 
and  they  instantly  devour  one  of  their  own  number  when 
wounded.  The  wolf  is  not  very  particular  as  to  his  feed;  mice, 
frogs,  buds  of  trees  or  lichens  go  to  supply  his  ravenous  capacity. 
Lions  are  not  very  choice  in  their  eating  as  they  will  feast  upon 
flesh  in  advanced  stages  of  decomposition.  The  aard  wolf,  a 
degenerate  hyena,  lives  on  carrion  and  termites.  The  cheek 
pouches  of  monkeys  are  developed  through  necessity  of  holding 
large  quantities  of  food  till  ready  for  digestion  later,  enabling 
hurried  gathering  and  subsequent  leisurely  eating.  The  Kaola 
is  a  cheek-pouched  animal.  Most  animals  in  Kamschatka  live 
on  fish  and  so  the  environment  determines  the  kind  of  animals 
that  will  survive  there,  such  animals  as  could  not  adjust  to  a  fish 
diet  had  to  leave  the  country  or  perish.  The  fishing  cat  habitat  is 
from  southern  India  to  China,  but  its  diet  is  not  exclusive  for 
this  fierce  animal  destroys  and  eats  sheep  or  infants,  snakes  or 
molluscs.  The  baboon  is  an  impartial  gourmand  and  eats  any- 
thing from  insects  to  fruit.  Our  remote  several-times-removed 
uncles  the  lemurs  are  more  omnivorous  than  we  are.  They  are 
essentially  night  prowlers  and  live  in  forests,  on  leaves,  fruits, 
insects,  reptiles,  birds'  eggs  and  the  birds  themselves.  The  black 
bear  is  growing  more  carnivorous  and  appears  to  be  dissatisfied 
with  a  diet  of  herbs  and  destroys  more  than  he  eats.  Bears  are 
generally  fond  of  honey  and  risk  bee  stings  bravely  in  getting 
at  it.  When  meat  fails  the  grizzly  feeds  on  berries,  acorns,  nuts, 
etc.  In  Europe  the  brown  bear  kills  and  eats  cattle  but  in  the 
Himalayas  insects  and  vegetables  are  its  food,  unless  it  happens 
upon  a  carcass.  In  Kamschatka  it  subsists  upon  salmon.  The 
polar  bear  eats  sea  weed,  grasses,  lichens  as  well  as  flesh.  Crab 
eating  macaques  have  a  wide  distribution.  The  sloth  has  remark- 
able ability  to  survive  injury  and  poison  eating.  It  may  also  fast 
for  a  month  without  trouble.  It  is  like  the  reptiles  in  being  lowly 
organized  in  such  respects.  It  expends  little  energy  and  hence  is 
less  sensitive  and  needs  less  fuel  for  its  mechanism  to  work  upon. 
Equivalent  to  human  addictions  such  as  tobacco,  liquor,  and  hash- 
eesh all  members  of  the  cat  family  have  a  great  relish  for  catnip, 
whether  lions,  tigers,  leopards  or  pumas.     The    domestic    cat    is 


28o  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

attracted  by  valerian  and  enjoys  its  odor  immensely.  Most  vam- 
pires are  not  blood-suckers,  but  two  species  are  now  known  to  be 
such.  Darwin  caught  one  in  the  act  of  sucking  blood  from  a 
horse.  Blood-sucking  mosquitoes  are  well  known.  Robber  flies 
suck  other  insects  dry.  Pressed  by  hunger  locusts  eat  plants  they 
ordinarily  avoid  and  devour  their  own  dead  or  even  go  so  far  as 
to  eat  their  own  larvae.  Snakes  feed  upon  lesser  snakes,  in  obe- 
dience to  the  widely  applicable  law  of  eating  animals  that  can 
not  eat  you.  The  climbing  snakes  of  Europe  feed  on  voles  and 
mice,  and  incidentally  they  thus  benefit  farmers.  Pythons  crush 
their  victims,  cover  them  with  saliva  and,  when  gorging  them- 
selves, are  easily  killed.  Lizards  are  either  herbivorous  or  insect- 
iverous.  Armadilloes  crush  snakes  and  eat  them.  Sea  anemones 
are  carnivorous.  The  microscopical'  rotifer  whips  its  cilia  around 
to  draw  food  to  its  mouth.  The  majority  of  eagles  kill  their  own 
prey,  but  few  refuse  to  eat  what  is  found  dead,  and  some  eat 
carrion.  The  golden  eagle  hunts  rabbits  in  pairs,  one  is  reserved 
to  watch  for  a  departure  from  the  course  and  pounces  on  the 
rabbit  when  he  escapes,  the  other  eagle  follows  him  closely.  Mr. 
Hume,  a  naturalist,  says  .that  in  India  the  imperial  eagle  is  a  foul 
feeder  and  a  coward,  even  crows  have  whipped  him.  Birds  of 
paradise  are  omnivorous.  The  shoveller  duck  of  India  is  equally 
at  home  in  foul  or  fair  pools  and  feeds  on  everything  whether 
nice  or  nasty.  A  family  of  perching  birds  feed  on  honey  from 
flowers  of  the  gum  and  other  trees  in  Australia,  by  means  of  a 
long  extensile  tongue.  The  rhinoceros  hornbill  catches  food  on 
the  end  of  its  bill  and  tosses  it  in  the  air  and  catches  it  in  its 
mouth.  The  New  Zealand  Ka-Ka  parrot  kills  sheep  for  food  and 
eats  their  kidneys.  The  raven  is  a  scavenger  but  attacks  weak 
lambs  or  feeble  fawns.  Crows  live  upon  carcasses  and  droppings, 
especially  the  carrion  crow.  The  rook  eats  insects  but  plunders 
cornfields.  Petrels  are  the  "sea-vultures,"  when  an  animal  is 
killed  numbers  of  petrels  appear  as  by  magic  and  gorge  themselves 
till  they  cannot  fly  and  they  fight  for  the  first  bite,  disgorging  an 
evil  smelling  oily  fluid  if  disturbed.  A  cormorant  gorges  a  live 
eel  but  a  stork  shakes  it  to  death  first.  Martens  are  blood  thirsty 
and  kill  more  than  they  devour.  The  nut  cracker  examines  and 
cracks  nuts  to  eat.    Brids'  eggs  and  young  of  other  birds  are  ab- 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  281 

sorbed  by  the  destructive  jay.  Piping  crows  of  Australia  eat 
great  quantities  of  grass-hoppers.  The  spoon-beaked  sturgeon 
probably  feels  for  its  prey,  as  its  eyes  are  small.  The  parrot-fish 
with  horny  beaks  are  able  to  browse  on  the  coral  polyps  without 
teing  stung  by  their  stinging  cells.  File-fishes  feed  on  corals  and 
molluscs,  by  means  of  strong  incisors.  Fishes  may  be  vegetarian 
or  carniverous,  but  the  mud-fish  of  Africa  devour  everything 
given  them  that  they  can  swallow,  and  then  kill  and  eat  each 
other.  They  have  peculiar  limbs  on  each  side  and  come  to  the 
surface  to  breathe. 

Oxygen,  whether  aerived  from  the  air  or  the  water,  is  a  food, 
and  a  very  necessary  one.  In  low  forms  of  life  oxygen  is  ab- 
sorbed by  the  same  channels  that  take  in  and  assimilate  all  other 
food.  Even  in  some  early  fish  forms,  without  lungs  or  gills,  such 
as  the  Cobitus  fossilis,  the  air  was  separated  from  the  water  in 
the  intestines.  ,The  swimming  bladder  is  a  rudimentary  lung, 
and  by  becoming  more  and  more  vascular  the  air  in  contact  with 
the  blood  vessels  of  that  bladder  yields  oxygen,  and  the  gill  and 
lung  methods  of  breathing  become  rivals  for  affording  oxygena- 
tion of  the  blood.  In  the  lung-fishes  the  air  bladder  is  elongated 
and  performs  the  function  of  a  lung;  the  mudfish  comes  to  the 
surface  to  breathe  as  do  water  mammals,  these  and  air  breathers 
take  in  and  let  out  air  at  the  surface  of  the  water,  and  drown  if 
kept  under,  while  others  habituated  to  water  breathing  will 
perish  in  the  air,  though  some  can  live  in  either  air  or  water.  The 
mudfish  dies  out  of  the  air.  The  siren  salamander  has  external 
^ills  but  can  also  breathe  wholly  by  lungs,  this  form  has  no  hind- 
limbs  and  looks  like  a  snake.  It  is  torpid  from  October  to  April. 
The  hell-bender,  or  Mississippi  salamander,  has  been  seen  to 
blow  air  from  its  lungs  over  its  gills  to  oxygenate  the  latter.  If 
the  mouth  of  a  frog  is  kept  open  it  cannot  breathe,  and  dies  of 
suffocation,  comparable  to  the  dependence  of  a  horse  upon  its 
nostrils  through  which  it  breathes ;  paralysis  of  a  horse's  nostrils 
means  suffocation.  Serpent  heads,  torpid  in  hard  mud  in  the  dry 
season,  are  amphibious,  and  live  either  on  the  ground  in  the  air, 
or  get  their  oxygen  direct  from  the  water.  When  embryo  fish 
have  gills  which  they  shed  upon  developing  into  lung  animals  the 
pseudo-branchial  remains  of  the  gills,  become  a  mere  plexus  of 


282  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

blood  vessels.  I  advanced  the  idea  that  the  thyroid  gland,  ton- 
sils and  thymus  gland  were  probably  remains  of  the  external  and 
internal  gills  of  the  fish  embryonal  stage  of  man,  when  the  fish 
cardinal  vascular  system  occurs,  and  the  pleura  covers  these 
glands  in  development.  Occasionally  gill  slits  may  persist  in 
man  in  the  unsightly  branchial  fistulse,  or  slits  in  the  neck.  The 
embryo  of  man  has  well  defined  gill  slits  with  other  animals.^ 

As  the  roots  of  plants  grow  towards  their  food  so  the  amoeba 
and  other  protozoa  are  attracted  to  their  sustenance.  If  what  is 
eaten  is  chemically  converted  by  the  intestinal  cells  certainly 
chemical  attraction  exists  in  those  regions,  and  undeniable  chem- 
ical processes  take  place  in  the  building  up  of  blood,  bone,  car- 
tilage, muscle,  nerve,  brain  and  other  tissues;  then  ultimately 
hunger  is  chemical  attraction  and  we  merely  recognize  it  in  con- 
sciousness. The  seed  of  the  plant  gets  its  chemical  nourishment 
from  the  soil,  air  and  water,  and  these  are  to  the  plant  what 
organic  compounds,  as  meat  and  vegetables,  with  inorganic  air 
and  water,  are  to  the  animal,  and  the  chemical  absorption  from 
the  circulation  and  tissues  of  what  is  needed  to  build  the  embryo 
is  similarly  supplied  to  the  seed  by  the  soil  in  its  development 
into  a  plant.  Cuvier  likens  the  intestines  of  animals  to  a  reser- 
voir from  which  nutriment  is  drawn  for  the  system,  as  animals 
move  about  and  plants  remain  stationary  and  do  not  need  such 
a  reservoir.  Huxley  holds  to  the  identity  of  animals  with  plants.* 
The  entire  muscular,  nervous  and  other  apparatus  of  life  that 
enables  movement  is  evolved  because  it  enables  the  animal  to 
obtain  things  to  put  in  its  stomach  and  looking  over  the  teeming 
populations,  especially  Asiatic,  African  and  Polynesian,  most 
human  beings  merely  vegetate,  exist  with  little  if  any  motive  or 
aim  in  life.  The  Hindoo  and  lizard  bask  in  the  sun  and  doze. 
When  hunger  is  appeased  inactivity,  both  bodily  and  mental, 
again  follows.  Most  animals  and  men  appear  not  only  to  e^t  to 
live  but  to  live  to  eat.  And  several  million  people  die  off  yearly 
through  famine.  Small  vicissitudes  of  nature,  such  as  the  failure 
of  rains,  through  forests  being  cut  off  from  mountains,  a  bubonic 
plague,  the  diversion  of  the  Yellow  river  of  China  a  thousand 

^  Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology,  1883. 
*  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Vol.  VIII,  p.  656. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  28^ 

miles  or  so  in  its  cutting  a  new  channel  and  drowning  or  starving 
out  multitudes,  may  reduce  populations  rapidly.  India  under- 
went famines  in  1896,  '97,  '99,  1900,  Russia  in  1899  and  China 
in  1901,  among  recent  instances,  while  unnumbered  pestilences 
and  famines  had  previously  afflicted  these  countries. 

Men  and  animals  eat  what  they  can  get,  and  custom,  supersti- 
tion and  habit  affect  their  ideas  of  what  is  and  what  is  not  to  be 
eaten.  Chinese  cooking  does  not  often  agree  with  the  white 
man's  stomach ;  we  are  repelled  from  rats,  snakes,  lizards  and 
carrion,  as  articles  of  diet.  Horses,  frog  legs  and  snails  have 
been  gradually  popularized  as  food  since  the  Franco-Prussian 
and  South  African  wars.  Gradual  toleration  is  acquired  for  such 
things  as  liquors,  cocoa,  limburger  cheese,  coffee,  tea,  hasheesh 
and  opium.  The  craving  for  some  of  these,  such  as  alcoholics 
and  opium,  is  an  acquired  hunger  to  which  the  intestinal  cells, 
including  those  of  the  stomach  particularly,  have  become  habitu- 
ated and  adjusted,  until  great  suffering  occurs  from  the  privation 
of  such  poisons.  In  North  Carolina  there  are  people  who  delight 
in  eating  clay  in  which  there  appears  to  be  a  small  amount  of  fos- 
sil plant  and  animal  substances.  The  perversion  of  a  basic  func- 
tion, such  as  eating,  is  paralleled  by  sexual  perversion. 

Swift  remarks  that  "the  stoical  scheme  of  supplying  our 
wants  by  lopping  off  our  desires  is  like  cutting  off  our  feet  when- 
ever we  want  shoes."  Like  any  other  comparison  too  much  can 
be  made  of  it.  It  is  not  well  to  let  our  feet  carry  us  where  they 
will.  We  have  brains  as  well  as  feet  to  regulate  their  going  and 
coming,  but  it  is  not  given  to  every  one  to  master  himself.  Per- 
nicious desires,  such  as  for  liquors,  should  be  avoided  and  sup- 
pressed if  possible,  but  when  fastened  should  be  considered  as  due 
to  disease,  and  the  sufferer  should  be  aided  in  recovery  instead 
of  punished,  as  society  is  inclined  to  do. 

Some  of  the  mechanical  relations  of  the  feeling  of  hunger 
are  observed  in  the  fact  that  by  "sinching,"  or  making  the  belt 
around  the  waist  tighter,  hunger  may  be  temporarily  appeased; 
it  appears  to  induce  a  feeling  similar  to  that  of  fullness  or  reple- 
tion. Then  the  dependence  of  the  bodily  and  mental  functions 
upon  plenty  of  water  circulating  all  over  the  system  is  seen  in 
the  fact  that  most  of  our  weight  is  in  water  that  fills  the  tissues. 


284  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

and  further  when  crossing  a  hot  desert  there  is  at  first  great  de- 
pression and  languor,  and  if  the  water  that  is  rapidly  evaporated 
from  the  body  is  not  promptly  resupplied  frenzy  follows  with 
chatter  about  drinking,  and  imagining  that  water  and  beer  is  be- 
ing drunk.  This  suggests  that  in  other  forms  of  insanity  there 
may  be  hygroscopic  faults  in  the  brain  and  its  ventricles  and  other 
channels  for  liquids. 

The  lowest  animal  may  be  conceived  of  as  compelled  to  spend 
its  entire  time  in  securing  a  bare  subsistence,  and  when  starva- 
tion assails  a  human  being  he  is  practically  reduced  to  a  similar 
necessity.  His  mechanism  for  obtaining  food  may  be  more  com- 
plex, but  when  out  of  his  environment  this  superadded  structure 
merely  adds  to  his  agony,  and  so  the  highest  and  lowest  animals 
may  be  placed  upon  the  same  plane  in  the  struggle  for  existence. 

The  processes  of  digestion  normally  take  place  without  mak- 
ing us  aware  of  them ;  disease  may  change  this  so  that  we  become 
conscious  that  something  is  going  om  in  our  stomach  or  other 
viscera.  Undoubtedly  there  are  centers  in  the  brain  connected 
with  the  abdominal  organs,  though  as  yet  their  demonstration  is 
imperfect.  There  are  some  instances  of  complete  loss  of  appetite 
after  a  head  injury,  and  this  could  be  from  suppression  of  the 
visceral  center  function  in  the  brain. 

The  food  desire  is  connected  with  special  sense  centres  in  the 
brain.  The  call  to  meals  causes  the  worst  dements  in  an  asylum 
to  scramble  to  their  feet  and  rush  to  the  table,  showing  that 
auditory  associations  are  all-powerful  as  reminders  of  the  eating 
functions.  Snails  can  be  trained  to  know  the  voice  that  calls  them 
to  eat  and  respond  to  it  promptly.  Sights  and  odors  are  most 
closely  associated  with  the  eating  faculty  and  desires.  i\Iy  hippo- 
campal  theory  is  worth  mentioning  at  this  point.^  The  hippo- 
campus major  can  be  safely  assumed  as  directly  connecting  the 
olfactory  or  smelling  sense  with  the  centres  for  moving  the  eating 
organs,  such  as  the  lips,  tongue,  jaws.  Early  mammals  or  rep- 
tiles dependent  upon  the  smelling  sense  for  food  discrimination 
would  certainly  in  time  have  massive  strands  of  nerve  fibres  con- 
necting the  smelling  sense  nerve  roots  with  the  brain  portions 
devoted  to  mastication  and  deglutition,  chewing  and  swallowing, 

^  Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology,  1883. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  285 

for  smell  was  the  main  guide  to  every  step  of  its  eating  processes. 
The  large  bundle  of  fibres  that  proceeds  from  the  olactory  nerve 
root,  and  curves  around  the  side  of  the  ventricles  in  a  sickle 
shape,  could  readily  have  served  this  purpose.  But  in  animals 
that  have  learned  to  depend,  to  a  greater  or  less  extent,  upon 
vision,  as  to  whether  the  food  should  be  eaten  and  how  it  is  to  be 
eaten,  the  smelling  sense  is  of  less  importance,  and  in  the  simian 
family  the  higher  we  approach  to  man  we  find  the  smelling  sense 
growing  feebler  and  the  optic  sense  stronger.  The  hippocampus 
minor  or  calcar  avis  is  found  in  these  latter  animals,  and  is  the 
largest  in  man,  which  can  be  interpreted  as  associating  the  optic 
faculty  with  the  hippocampal  fibres  that  pass  forward  to  the  gus- 
tatory centres  that  were  once  controlled  by  the  olfactory  fibres. 
The  hippocampus  major  is  still  large  and  the  hippocampus  minor 
is  small,  but  this  is  accounted  for  by  the  former  having  been  built 
up  through  millions  of  years  of  prehuman  existence,  while  the 
hippocampus  minor  is  representative  of  the  period  when  in  the 
evolution  of  man  he  and  his  progenitors  have  relied  upon  eye- 
sight more  than  smelling  when  they  sought  food  or  ate  it. 

The  earliest  desire  being  for  food  the  organs  concerned  in  its 
reception  and  elaboration  would  be  where  desire  for  food  makes 
itself  manifest;  the  stomach  and  intestinal  conditions  acquaint  us 
with  hunger  and  thirst  or  repletion,  and  the  nerves  running  to  the 
brain  from  these  parts  merely  notify  consciousness  of  these  states. 
Hunger  is  not  in  the  brain,  it  is  in  the  abdomen,  but  the  con- 
sciousness of  hunger  is  in  the  brain,  and  the  higher  reflex  centers 
are  situated  there  as  an  evolution  of  the  better  and  still  better 
hunger  appeasing  processes,  those  motions  best  adapted  to  get- 
ting food  in  all  the  multitudinous  ways  animals  and  men  have 
developed. 

Clouston  of  Edinburgh  suggested  that  alcohol  was  often 
craved  when  it  was  a  misinterpretation  of  some  other  physio- 
logical desire  that  was  really  concerned.  The  passage  of  a  urin- 
ary calculus  can  cause  great  pain  and  a  distended  colon  or  bladder 
may  arouse  a  general  congested  feeling  with  attempts  at  relief 
of  other  than  the  real  organ  involved.  This  sort  of  misconstruc- 
tion reminds  one  of  the  lines  in  Tom  Hood's  Rae  Wilson,  in 


286  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

which  he  mentions  the  self-elected  saint  feeling  pious  when  he 
was  only  bilious. 

Hunger  is  the  earliest  desire  and  is  inherited  and  constructed 
from  the  attractions  of  atoms  for  atoms  and  molecules  which 
go  to  make  up  the  living  cells.  All  acquisitive  desires  and  facul- 
ties are  derived  from  and  based  upon  hunger.  As  money  is 
merely  representative  wealth,  and  no  wealth  is  desirable  in  the 
absence  of  food,  a  tentative  location  of  acquisitiveness  may  be 
placed  at  the  gustatory  centers  and  the  pneumogastric  roots  in 
the  brain. 

The  dislike  for  food  (anorexia)  that  occurs  in  melancholia  is 
due  to  the  want  of  tone  of  the  intestinal  tract  with  the  poisons 
that  are  generated  and  retained  in  the  stomach,  fresh  food  lying 
undigested  and  adding  to  the  distress  and  the  weakened  brain 
misinterprets  bad  sensations  as  due  to  persecution.  The  entire 
body  loathes  food  in  this  instance  just  as  the  entire  body  par- 
ticipates in  an  orgasm  and  for  comparable  reasons.  The  hunger 
of  pregnancy  is  owing  to  the  added  necessity  for  food  to  build 
up  the  new  organism  superimposed  upon  the  mother,  and  some- 
times the  system  cannot  properly  interpret  the  demands  made 
upon  it  and  in  some  pregnant  women  there  are  perversions  of 
appetite  in  consequence. 

An  Indian  can  go  days  without  eating,  and  starving  sensa- 
tionalists use  a  minimum  of  food  taken  secretly  while  pretending 
to  take  none  at  all,  a  common  trick  of  hysterical  notoriety-seek- 
ers. It  is  a  fact  that  one  can  become  blunted  to  hunger  and  not 
suffer  as  much  as  at  first  and  in  the  last  stages  of  starvation  all 
desire  for  food  disappears.  Repression  of  the  sexual  function 
would  be  more  possible  in  the  aged  and  less  possible  in  the  young, 
particularly  when  living  on  good  food.  Rich  food  and  wines 
would  render  suppression  in  a  young  adult  next  to  impossible. 

Hunger  concerns  the  enteric  and  every  other  cell  in  the  body 
that  is  nourished  and  varies  according  to  cellular  needs.  The 
assimilative  attraction  of  organic  and  inorganic  substances  to 
cells  as  food  necessarily  involved  a  growth,  and  incidentally 
excretion  of  such  materials  as  could  not  be  taken  into  the  cellular 
organism.  So  eating,  growth  and  excretion  were  the  first  facul- 
ties evolved   from   chemical   affinities   in   living  organisms,   and 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  287 

when  a  growing  cell  splits  into  two  or  more  cells,  then  repro- 
duction appeared.  Contractility  is  merely  assimilative  motion, 
the  primitive  object  of  all  animal  motion  being  assimilative.  Irri- 
tability and  automatism  are  motilities  derived  from  the  assimila- 
tive. The  secretory  is  merely  another  term  for  excretory  meta- 
bolism following  assimilation.  Materials  excreted  by  one  cell  or 
set  of  cells,  such  as  an  organ,  may  be  adapted  as  food  for  an- 
other set  of  cells,  or  some  of  the  excreted  compounds  may  be 
selected  by  the  cells  until  finally  completed  excreted.  The  respir- 
atory process  is  an  assimilative  one.  The  mAiscles  and  nervous 
system  are  built  primarily  upon  the  ingestive  tube,  and  the  vas- 
cular and  lymphatic  systems  are  also  appendages  of  the  intes- 
tines, so  we  have  the  enteric  tract  first  developed.  Nutrient  chan- 
nels are  the  intestines,  lymphatics,  arteries  and  veins.  These 
supply  the  other  cells  of  the  body  with  food,  and  reciprocally  the 
limbs  and  jaws  contribute  to  the  procuring  of  food.  Hence  in 
the  evolution  of  the  body  the  intestines  stand  first;  next  is  the 
blood  vessel  system,  then  the  locomotor  apparatus.  The  sense 
organs  arise  from  the  tactile.  The  limbs  develop  the  jaw,  demon- 
strably in  lobsters  and  crabs,  and  are  built  upon  the  enteric 
development.  Innervation  of  the  eating  canal  precedes  all  other 
innervation,  necessarily,  for  it  is  the  earliest  and  most  important 
means  of  correlating  the  lowest  life  functions.  As  the  eating, 
growing,  excreting  and  reproductive  faculties  are  the  earliest  and 
most  general  they  are  very  tenacious  and  the  last  processes  to 
hecome  extinct.  The  breathing  ability  is  a  form  of  eating,  for 
oxygen  is  a  food,  and  a  little  spot  called  the  vacuole  that  appears 
in  any  part  of  the  amoeba,  a  spot  that  enlarges  and  bursts,  is  the 
early  forerunner  of  respiration  through  a  fixed  organ  such  as 
gills  or  lungs.  This  vacuole  contains  the  gases  generated  by 
assimilation,  to  be  excreted,  as  carbonic  acid,  etc.,  the  oxygen 
being  absorbed  by  all  parts  of  the  animal,  therefore  the  vacuole 
is  expiratory  and  performs  only  the  exhaling  function  and  so  is 
the  representative  of  the  lung  in  the  excretory  sense  only.  The 
lowest  animal  moves,  eats,  excretes  and  reproduces.  Differen- 
tiation of  organs  enables  these  movements  and  functions  to  be 
more  definite,  but  even  to  the  highest  animal  these  are  the  main 
accomplishments  of  existence.    The  correlation  of  these  functions 


288  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

is  obtained  through  a  highly  organized  relating  nervous  system, 
rendering  the  movements  more  intelligent  in  man  and  other 
higher  animals. 

No  sooner  are  young  turtles  hatched  than  myriads  of  them 
fall  victims  to  land  crabs  and  sea  birds,  while  when  they  reach 
the  sea  fishes  destroy  them.  During  the  breeding  season  the 
males  fight  and  the  disabled  ones  are  seized  by  sharks.  The 
association  of  hunger  with  love,  primarily,  will  appear  later  in 
this  chapter. 

The  anolis  lizard  males  are  extremely  jealous  and  fight  till 
one  loses  his  tail  which  is  the  sign  of  defeat  and  this  probably 
reduces  his  value  in  the  eyes  of  the  female.  Woodcocks  skulk 
until  love  makes  them  bold  when  they  fight  for  mates.  Male  chaf- 
finches are  furiously  jealous  of  rivals.  Cock  birds  fight  in  spring 
to  June.  The  ruflf  (Totanus  pugnax),  another  of  the  plover 
tribe,  is  remarkable  for  the  males  forming  ruffs  around  their 
necks  periodically,  and  these  ruffs  seldom  are  twice  alike,  being 
also  variable  at  the  same  season.  Very  pugnacious  are  the  cocks 
and  they  differ  from  all  their  kin  in  being  polygamous,  the  fe- 
males largely  exceeding  the  males  in  number.  The  males  fight 
French  duels  for  possession  of  the  females.  The  mute  swan 
nests  in  May  when  the  male  is  extremely  belligerent.  Mr.  Jen- 
ner  Weir  finds  that  all  male  birds  with  rich  or  strongly  charac- 
terized plumage  are  more  quarrelsome  than  the  dull  colored  spe- 
cies belonging  to  the  same  groups.  The  gold  finch  for  instance 
is  far  more  pugnacious  than  the  linnet  and  the  blackbird  than  the 
thrush,  and  seasonal  changes  cause  pugnacity  when  gaily  orna- 
mented. Brilliantly  colored  parrots  have  bad  tempers.  The  sal- 
mon males  fight  fiercely  with  one  another  in  attending  the  females 
when  spawning.  When  a  stickleback  fish  is  conquered  in  sex 
fight"  his  gallant  bearing  is  over,  his  gay  colors  fade  and  he  hides, 
his  disgrace,  but  is  for  some  time  the  constant  object  of  his  con- 
queror's persecution.  Male  salmon  and  trout  are  great  fight- 
ers, two  male  salmon  have  been  seen  to  fight  all  day,  the  males 
are  constantly  fighting  and  tearing  each  other  in  the  spawning 
beds  and  injure  each  other  so  as  to  cause  many  deaths,  exhaus- 
tion and  dying  states.  In  the  breeding  season  the  lower  jaw 
of  the  male  changes  to  a  hook-like  projection  for  fighting.     Sea 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  289 

lions  have  pitched  battles  for  mates.  Eared  seals  are  polygamous 
and  the  males  are  the  larger.  Old  males  wait  at  the  "rookeries" 
and  wage  war  for  the  females,  the  strongest  get  the  largest  num- 
ber of  females,  usually  ten  to  fifteen,  and  they  fast  to  guard  their 
harems  several  weeks.  An  old  sea  bear  in  a  similar  fight  to 
build  up  his  harem,  favored  by  a  single  path  of  access  and  a 
sort  of  fortified  situation,  had  forty-five  of  the  gentle  females. 
Darwin's  law  of  battle*"'  or  fighting  for  females  is  nearly  uni- 
versal. Even  the  kangaroo  males,  otherwise  harmless,  engage 
in  fierce  contests  during  the  pairing  season. 

Women  are  constantly  the  cause  of  war  in  the  same  tribe  or 
between  different  tribes.  The  Indians  of  North  America  have  a 
regular  system  of  battle,  men  wrestle  for  women  and  the  strong- 
est gets  her,  so  the  youths  constantly  practice  wrestling.''  Hot 
blooded  southern  races  are  apt  to  imitate  animals  in  their  fights 
or  battles  for  love,  but  in  jealousy  among  Northern  people  there 
is  apt  to  be  less  bloody  results. 

The  season  of  love  among  birds  and  other  animals  is  that  of 
battle.  It  does  not  appear  that  females  prefer  the  victor.  Ko- 
walevsky  says  the  female  capercailzie  will  sometimes  steal  away 
with  a  young  male  who  has  not  dared  to  enter  the  arena  with 
the  older  cocks.  If  the  law  of  battle  or  any  other  performance 
becomes  the  settled  method  among  a  species  by  which  mating 
should  occur  then  departures  from  that  rule  would  practically 
amount  to  bird  or  other  animal  immorality,  it  is  sexual  prefer- 
ence acted  upon  in  defiance  of  conventional  rules,  intriguing  and 
violation  of  social  laws.  It  is  probable  that  sparrows  condemn 
Lotharios  to  death  by  a  court  resembling  the  old  Saxon  hundred 
court,  and  then  appoint  an  executioner  who  may  be  an  aggrieved 
party.  The  red  deer  of  Scotland  are  distracted  by  wandering 
males  trying  to  disturb  the  peace  of  mated  pairs.  The  battles 
of  knights  errant  were  often  for  lady  loves.  Darwin  notes  that 
the  victors  in  animal  battles  are  not  always  attractive,  for  other 
matters  than  prowess  are  factors,  such  as  song  and  colors.  Sham 
battles  are  sometimes  engaged  in  like  the  contests  of  oratory, 
foot  ball,  etc.,  of  human  competitors.    Voices  appear  to  have  the 

®  Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  I,  p.  228. 

'Descent  of  Man,  Chas.  Darwin,  Vol.  I,  pp.  308,  et  seq. 


290  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

double  primary  function  of  frightening  rivals  or  enemies  and  for 
making  love.  The  rivalry  is  competitive,  the  ambition  is  to 
achieve  excellence,  the  love  of  approbation  is  seen  in  matching 
birds  to  sing  when  one  may  drop  dead  from  rupturing  a  blood 
vessel  in  the  lungs  in  trying  to  sing  loudest  and  longest.^  Vocal 
and  instrumental  sounds  so  commonly  serve  as  a  love  call  or  love 
charm  that  the  power  producing  them  Darwin  thinks  was  prob- 
ably first  developed  in  connection  with  propagation  of  the  species. 
He  notes  that  the  male  stickleback  (Gasterosteus  leisurus)  is  mad 
with  delight  when  the  female  comes  out  and  surveys  the  nest  he 
has  made  for  her.  He  darts  around  her  in  every  direction  and 
tries  to  push  her  with  his  snout  and  pull  her  by  the  tail  and  side 
spines  to  the  nest.  Love  handicaps  birds  with  heavy  plumage 
and  makes  them  conspicuous  to  their  enemies,  a  consciousness 
of  which  develops  shyness.  The  presence  of  a  female  true 
cuckoo  excites  the  interest  of  more  than  one  male.  She  utters  a 
kwik,  wik,  wik,  and  attracts  all  the  males  who  quarrel  and  fight. 
During  the  love  season  the  double  call  cue,  cue,  koo,  is  heard  as 
if  the  male  were  trembling  with  passion.  They  are  polyandrous 
and  the  females  do  the  courting. 

The  robber  flies  (Asilidse)  feed  upon  other  insects  by  sucking 
them  dry  and  the  males  take  advantage  of  the  female  being  en- 
gaged in  a  repast  to  approach  the  female,  otherwise  he  might  be 
emptied  of  his  liquid  contents.  This  may  be  but  an  impartial 
appetite  such  as  enables  animals  to  eat  their  young  but  there  are 
other  cannabalistic  acts  associated  directly  with  sexual  ardor  to 
which  I  called  attention  in  1881.^ 

Dog  females  bestow  their  affections  and  are  not  always  pru- 
dent in  their  loves  and  are  apt  to  fling  themselves  away  on  curs 
of  low  degree.  If  reared  with  the  vulgar  an  affection  may  spring 
up  which  nothing  can  subdue.^"  The  Chinese  Sunday  schools 
with  white  women  teachers  and  the  negro  or  other  coachman  too 
often  in  company  of  the  heiress  occasionally  exhibit  the  power 
of  propinquity.    Darwin  holds  that  female  dogs  are  attracted  by 

'  Op.  Cit.,  Vol.  II,  pp.  47  to  50. 

^  Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology,  1883. 

"  Mayhew,  quoted  by  Darwin,  Op.  Cit.,  p.  258. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  29I 

large  sized  males^^  but  it  is  rare  for  a  male  to  refuse  any  female 
dog.  Dogs  form  decided  preferences  for  each  other  being  often 
influenced  by  size,  bright  color  and  individual  character,  as  well 
as  by  the  degree  of  their  previous  familiarity.  Stallions  are  capri- 
cious, rejecting  one  mare  and  taking  to  another  without  appar- 
ent cause.  Some  mares  have  been  known  to  reject  a  horse.  Sows 
reject  one  boar  and  prefer  others,  cows  also  refuse  certain  bulls, 
as,  for  instance,  a  Jersey  may  not  like  a  Holstein.  Darwin  notes 
that  most  female  fish  are  larger  than  the  male  and  the  males 
suffer  from  their  small  size  for  they  are  liable  to  be  devoured 
by  the  females  of  their  own  species.  The  larger  size  of  the 
female  doubtless  enables  production  of  large  quantities  of  ova. 
In  many  cases  the  male  alone  has  bright  colors  and  has  orna- 
mented appendages,  and  when  they  are  young  males  resemble 
adult  females.  In  a  siluroid  fish  of  South  America,  the  Plecos- 
tomas  barbatus,  the  male  has  a  beard  of  stiff  hair,  which  is  absent 
in  the  female.  With  fishes  there  is  a  close  relation  between  their 
colors  and  sexual  functions,  and  organs  and  colors  may  develop 
during  the  breeding  season;  the  males  are  ardent  in  courtship 
and  often  fight  desperately  with  each  other.  The  higher  orna- 
mented males  appear  to  urge  their  selection  by  the  females.^- 

Breeders  incline  to  think  that  the  male  of  quadrupeds  accepts 
any  female,  but  it  is  doubtful  if  the  female  accepts  any  male, 
on  the  contrary,  she  often  rejects  the  male.  The  capture  of  wives 
by  the  eared  seals  is  narrated^^  as  gentle  at  first  and  later  fierce 
in  manner.  The  male  seal  recognizes  the  value  of,  what  is  not 
exclusively  human,  obsequiousness  and  winning  ways,  until  there 
is  no  further  occasion  for  them,  when  the  brute  nature  of  seals 
and  man  may  then  assert  itself  in  gruffness  and  severity.  Night 
jar  females  exert  the  choice  and  when  it  is  made  other  males  are 
driven  off.  Among  pheasants  there  is  caprice  in  all  attachments. 
The  pea  hen  is  most  excited  by  the  male  that  pleases  her  by  bril- 
liance, melody  or  gallantry.^*  The  general  effect  is  what  deter- 
mines the  choice  as  with  human  beings.     Magpies  console  them- 

"  Op.  Cit.,  p.  258. 

"  Op.  Cit.,  p.  7- 

"  Op.  Cit.,  p.  257. 

"Op.  Cit.,  pp.  Ill,  118. 


2Q2  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

selves  rapidly  with  new  mates  when  the  old  ones  die.  Owls  also, 
according  to  White  of  Selborne,  and  sparrows,  chaffinches,  night- 
ingales and  redstarts.  The  sitting  widow  soon  gives  effectual 
notice  that  she  is  forlorn.  An  instance  is  given^^  of  a  starling 
consoling  itself  with  a  new  mate  three  times  in  one  day  when 
the  others  were  shot.  Birds  in  the  same  cage  do  not  always  mate, 
so  mere  nearness  is  only  one  among  several  factors  in  mating, 
and  birds  of  the  same  sex  may  sometimes  live  together  occasion- 
ally, even  in  triplets,  as  with  starlings,  carrion  crows,  parrots 
and  quails.  With  the  latter  there  have  been  combinations  of  two 
females  and  one  male,  and  one  female  and  two  males. ^^  Some 
macaws  with  harsh  voices  have  bad  taste  in  sound  and  color  at- 
traction, as  through  association  had  reconciled  them  to  defects, 
modifying  the  aesthetic  by  the  sexual  ardor.  The  grouse  in- 
dulges in  courtship  antics,  and  makes  a  drumming  noise  with  its 
feathers.  Darwin  observes  that  the  diversity  of  sounds  used  as 
means  of  courtship  is  remarkable.  He  describes  the  antics  of 
the  remarkable  bower  birds  of  Australia  who  collect  museums  of 
shells,  bones,  feathers  and  leaves  to  display  as  wealth  to  attract 
mates.  So  the  idea  of  property  possession  is  united  with  vanity 
in  courtship,  the  display  of  plumage  of  birds  and  other  evidences 
ot  great  vanity  is  mentioned.  A  naval  officer  who  had  been  ship- 
wrecked in  the  Pacific  Ocean  on  a  small  island  frequented  by 
penguins  says  that  the  salacity  of  those  birds  is  surprising.  The 
common  eel  is  notorious  for  intertwining  apposition  in  direct 
conjugation,  a  rather  surprising  inclination,  when  we  consider  the 
spawning  without  contact  of  fish  in  general,  even  though  many 
fish  indulge  in  the  chase  while  some,  as  the  trout,  are  quite  gentle- 
manly, considerate  and  modest,  following  the  female  at  a  respect- 
ful distance.  The  bream  female  is  followed  by  three  or  four 
admirers  when  she  is  ready  to  spawn. 

J,  M.  Aldrich,  a  naturalist, ^^  describes  courtship  among  the 
flies,  the  reluctance  of  females  and  ardor  and  persistence  of  the 
male  with  display  of  his  attractions.  Newts  are  like  fishes  in 
breeding  without  direct  union.     The  females  seize  the  lumps  of 

''  Op.  Cit.,  p.  loi. 
''  Op.  Cit.,  p.  102. 
"  American  Naturalist,  Jan.  1894,  p.  35. 


HUNGER    AND    I.OVE.  293 

Spermatozoa  and  convey  them  to  their  reproductive  organs. ^^  It 
is  difficult  to  trace  inducements  to  this  sort  of  propagation  to  any- 
thing alHed  to  methods  of  higher  animals,  but  the  connection 
necessarily  exists.  If  the  females  of  the  fish  left  their  ova  to  be 
fertilized  by  the  first  male  who  came  it  would  not  favor  sexual 
selection,  but  the  female  never  willingly  spawns  except  in  the 
close  presence  of  a  male  and  the  male  never  fertilizes  the  ova 
except  in  the  close  presence  of  the  female.  The  males  of  cer- 
tain South  American  and  Ceylon  fishes  hatch  eggs  within  their 
mouths  or  gills,  laid  there  by  the  females.  In  the  pipe  fish,  Hip- 
pocampus, etc.,  there  are  marsupial  sacks  or  depressions  on  the 
abdomen  of  males  in  which  eggs  are  laid  bv  the  female  and  are 
there  hatched.  The  males  show  great  attachment  to  the  young. 
The  Surinam  toad  also  has  pits  in  its  back  in  which  its  young  are 
reared.  The  sexes  look  alike  in  some  birds,  as  true  bulbuls,  in 
plumage.  Birds  of  Paradise  plumage  appears  to  be  an  extrava- 
gant result  of  sexual  selection.  They  have  dancing  parties  to 
parade  themselves.  The  birds  of  the  genus  Rupicola  are  bril- 
liantly colored.  The  genus  Solenostoma  is  exceptional  in  the 
female  being  more  brightly  colored  than  the  male  and  birds  are 
occasionally  inverted,  the  males  have  selected  in  such  cases  the 
more  attractive  females  instead  of  the  females  selecting  the  males. 
Snake  males  are  always  smaller  than  females  and  have  more  pro- 
nounced colors.  They  have  odoriferous  glands  to  attract  fe- 
males. While  male  snakes  are  amorous  they  are  not  known  to 
fight  from  rivalry.  Lizards  have  sexual  throat  pouches  and  wat- 
tles which  become  erected  in  excitement.  The  anolis  male  is 
crested.  The  grouse  has  a  sexual  throat  pouch.  The  male  Triton 
has  bright  colors  during  courtship.  The  crest  of  the  crested  seal 
is  presumed  to  be  a  sexual  feature,  like  the  antlers  of  a  deer,  as 
the  males  only  are  crested. 

Darwin^^  discusses  beards,  especially  those  of  monkeys,  as 
being  sexual  appendages ;  often  the  head  of  hair  assumes  queer 
shapes.  While  the  popular  ideas  are  that  animals  are  indiscrimin- 
ate, such  is  far  from  being  the  case  universally.  .Lions  pair  for 
life  and  have  two  to  six  cubs  at  a  birth  in  captivity.    The  Wan- 

^^  Lydeker's  Natural  History,  Vol.  V,  p.  290. 
^"Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  I,  p.  270. 


294  "^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

deroo  monkey  Is  monogamous.  The  tigers  consort  in  pairs,  but 
for  how  long  is  unknown.  Gray  seals  associate  in  pairs,  while  the 
eared  seals  are  polygamous,  and  the  causes  of  polygamy  among 
seals  are  mentioned  as  due  to  natural  causes. ^*^ 

The  long-beaked  bustard  differs  from  the  common  bustard  in 
being  polygamous  and  during  the  breeding  season  the  males  make 
attractive  display  before  the  females. 

Minnows  are  polyandrous  and  true  cuckoos  are  the  same,  the 
female  doing  all  the  courting. 

In  the  present  association  of  the  sexes  of  human  beings,  all 
the  different  methods  mentioned  in  a  previous  chapter  may  still 
be  found  to  exist  today,  as  well  as  the  Thibetan  strange  custom 
of  polyandry  where  one  woman  may  have  several  husbands.  Dr. 
Cook  says  that  the  West  Australians,  California  Indians  and  the 
Santals  of  India  pair  like  the  beasts  of  the  field  and  the  birds  of 
the  forest,-^  and  that  "among  the  natives  of  Northwest  Greenland 
coast  the  genital  sense  is  decidedly  periodical.  There  is  a  grand 
annual  outbreak  of  ardor  after  the  return  of  the  sun.  It  comes 
with  such  force  and  takes  them  with  such  suddenness  that  they 
frequently  quiver  with  passion  for  several  days.  This  culminates 
during  the  first  summer  days  in  what  may  be  called  an  epidemic 
of  venery  when  marital  exchanges  are  made  with  seeming  grace 
and  good  intentions."-^ 

An  Arabian  tribe  marries  for  so  many  days  in  the  week,  com- 
monly for,  days  during  which  the  wife  must  be  faithful,  but  on 
the  other  days  she  may  do  as  she  pleases.  Unfaithfulness  in  some 
hill  tribes  of  India  in  the  male  is  a  grave  offense,  but  is  regarded 
as  trivial  when  the  wife  is  unfaithful.  The  Tartar  wife  thinks 
she  must  be  abused  by  the  husband  or  she  is  not  liked,  and  it  is  a 
query  if  the  Formorian  Turanians  introduced  this  idea  into  Hiber- 
nia.  Among  the  Basques  the  father  goes  to  bed  when  his  infant 
is  born  and  the  wife  goes  to  her  work.  Other  peculiar  beliefs 
and  customs  are  described  by  Herbert  Spencer.^^  Monogamy, 
polygamy,  etc.,  are  products  of  the  periods  and  circumstances  in 

'"American  Naturalist,  Feb.  1891,  p.  103. 
^^  Quoting  Westermarck,  History  of  Human  Marriage,  p.  28. 
^^  F.  A.  Cook,  American  Anthropologist,  Vol.  XI,  p.  230. 
^  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  135. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE. 


295 


which  they  arise.  Wars  could  be  followed  by  polygamy  when  it 
did  not  previously  exist,  and  polyandry  could  arise  in  a  country 
where  many  female  children  were  destroyed  at  birth.  What  might 
be  regarded  as  the  best  interests  of  an  animal,  man,  race,  people 
at  one  time  might  be  considered  as  detrimental  later,  so  promis- 
cuity, polyandry  and  finally  monogamy  became  best  suited  to  the 
interests  of  a  race.  Certainly  monogamous  races  are  superior  to 
others.  Interbreeding  is  destructive  of  advance  and  has  caused 
primitive  arrest  of  development  and  degeneracy.  Saadi  of  Per- 
sia in  ''The  Gulistan"  laid  it  down  as  a  rule  that  a  young  woman 
cannot  love  an  old  man,  but  a  seventy-five-year-old  celebrity  in 
1902  won  a  twenty-one-year-old  bride  and  she  brought  him  sev- 
eral million  dollars,  so  money  in  this  case  was  not  a  factor,  and 
occasional  instances  of  this  kind  go  to  show  that  a  rule  has  ex- 
ceptions. Then  Lady  Burdett  Coutts  in  her  old  age  married  her 
secretary,  a  young  man,  and  she  certainly  did  not  marry  him  for 
his  money,  for  she  had  an  abundance  herself.  Too  frequently  un- 
happiness  follows  such  mating.  Edward  III,  when  old,  and  Alice 
Ferrers,  the  young  beauty,  lived  very  happily  together.  The  king 
denied  her  nothing  and  she  robbed  him  on  his  death  bed.  Love 
birds  are  little  parrots  that  are  greatly  attached  to  each  other,  but 
there  is  no  truth  in  the  story  of  one  dying  of  grief  over  the  loss  of 
a  mate.  They  quarrel  and  bicker  with  each  other  in  true  marital 
style.  A  gander  and  goose  were  so  fond  of  each  other  that  sep- 
aration once  nearly  killed  them,  and  their  reunion  was  affecting; 
they  crossed  necks,  gabbled  and  caressed  for  hours.  Brehm  re- 
gards the  cuckoo  as  discontet'*"d,  ill-conditioned,  pessimistic  and 
unamiable ;  its  notes  are  abrupt  and  angry.  Cuckoos  jealously 
guard  their  territorial  preserves  and  justify  the  supposition  that 
they  are  sparrow  hawks  in  disguise.  Their  parasitic  character  is 
in  keeping  with  their  general  behavior;  left  on  the  thresholds  of 
the  houses  of  other  birds  they  are  waifs  and  Ishmaelites.  The 
love  impulse  of  such  outcasts  wane  before  those  of  hunger,  and 
the  starved,  importunate  young  typify  the  adult. 

''Wherever  the  king  of  love  cometh  the  arm  of  piety  has  not 
power  to  resist  him,^*  and  the  complete  overriding  of  the  reason 
by  the  strong  emotion  is  indicated  in  the  observation  that  Cicero 

"*  Saadi,  Gulistan. 


296  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

after  his  divorce  from  Tullia,  when  invited  to  another  marriage, 
said  that  he  could  not  be  wise  and  in  love  at  the  same  time.  And 
that  **love  is  blind,"  further,  by  its  wide  recognition  points  to 
there  being  nothing  like  it  to  cause  self-deception,  delusion  and 
illusions.  An  ugly  person  when  loved  becomes  beautiful,  mean' 
natures  are  glorified.  There  is  a  hyperbole  of  love  that  puts  all 
one  may  do  in  the  superlative  degree ;  a  glamour  surrounds  the 
loved  one  and  the  fetich  spirit  of  worship  is  aroused,  so  that  arti- 
cles that  are  associated  with  the  loved  one  are  also  fondled  as  re- 
minders. 

The  complete  subjection  of  the  intellect  to  the  emotion  of 
love  renders  the  wisest  of  persons  captives  to  the  little  god.  It 
may  be  possible  for  a  great  intellect  to  subdue  an  unreasonable 
attachment,  but  by  an  extraordinary  effort  associated  with 
anguish.  He  might  appear  indifferent  or  even  heartless,  but  in 
reality  be  controlling  passion  with  judgment  and  the  suffering 
imdergone  may  be  intense.  Charles  Reade  remarks  of  one  who 
*'set  his  cool  brains  to  hatch  the  eggs  of  love  and  wondered  that 
the  result  was  addled."  When  the  first  ardor  of  passion  abates 
the  associated  and  more  intelligent  causes  of  attachment  are  en- 
joyed, as  companionship,  community  of  tastes,  conversation,  etc., 
nor  is  the  invariable  waning  of  the  honeymoon  any  proof  of  in- 
difference, for  let  jealousy  be  aroused  and  there  is  a  realization 
of  the  foundation  of  the  affections.  When  there  are  so  many  un- 
happy marriages  there  could  be  an  explanation  of  many  of  them 
as  founded  wholly  upon  impulse  in  defiance  of  reason.  An  inher- 
ited instinct  older  than  reason  and  more  deeply  connected  with 
every  cell  of  the  body  by  millions  of  years.  The  animal  pranks 
of  passion  can  thus  be  accounted  for.  A  laundress  in  an  insane 
asylum  became  infatuated  with  a  lunatic,  and  to  inform  her  of 
her  danger  I  read  the  history  record  of  the  patient  to  her  as  that 
of  a  homicidal,  alcoholic,  irresponsible  person  who  would  not  earn 
her  a  living  and  would  spend  what  she  earned  recklessly.  She 
insisted  upon  marrying  the  man. 

Such  ferocious  animals  as  the  gorilla  are  cruel  in  their  mani- 
festations of  desires,  and  the  occasional  brutality  of  men,  espe- 
cially negroes,  is  a  reversion  to  the  primitive  animal  behavior. 
The  lowest  intelligence  may  violate  the  helpless,  even  in  some 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  297 

cases  when  swift  punishment  is  known  to  surely  follow.  Another 
grade  of  intelligence  falls  into  the  divorce  habit. 

Many  are  the  instances  that  would  parallel  that  of  the  princess 
who  gave  up  her  right  to  the  throne  succession  to  run  away  with 
a  gypsy  outcast  lover.  But  an  attempt  to  cultivate  affection  or 
to  ignore  it  altogether  in  a  mariage  de  convenance  may  be  de- 
feated by  a  repugnance  to  certain  things  which  real  love  would 
scarcely  observe.  The  lady  who  refused  the  King  of  France  be- 
cause he  did  not  wash  his  feet  was  evidently  not  infatuated.  Races 
differ  widely  in  their  ideas  of  beauty,  some  preferring  black  or 
yellow  skins,  others  the  oval  European  face  and  fair  skin,  etc.,  and 
these  ideals  exert  great  influence  on  sexual  selection.  Schopen- 
hauer regards  the  form  and  not  the  face  as  inspiring  love, 
but  often  beauty  of  face  may  be  coupled  with  that  of  form,  though 
the  form  will  attract  whether  the  face  is  pretty  or  not.  Wallace 
thought  that  Darwin's  sexual  selection  ideas  were  faulty  in  re- 
garding animals  as  choosing  strength  and  courage,  but  we  see  in 
human  beings  that  which  with  modifications  is  true  of  animals,  it 
is  a  combination  of  several  things  going  to  make  up  a  resulting 
attraction  that  urges  the  determinant,  such  as  may  enable  a  young 
woman  to  overlook  age  in  the  admiration  of  an  intellect  such  as 
Chauncey  Depew's. 

"Dress  often  suggests  more  than  it  conceals"  because  what 
women  consider  as  attractive  to  men  they  incline  to  cultivate  and 
sometimes  exaggerate.  The  narrow  waist  is  persisted  in,  some- 
times when  the  tight  corset  caused  suffering  and  ill  health,  even 
though  unsightly  red  noses,  blotches  and  pimples  follow  upon 
obstructed  digestion  and  may  be  known  to  result  from  the  tight 
lacing,  thus  implying  that  Schopenhauer's  notion  was  correct  that 
the  form  rather  than  the  face  is  the  main  attraction.  Tight  lacing 
gives  a  relatively  large  appearance  to  the  hips,  and  in  all  ages  this 
has  been  regarded  as  a  female  allurement.  An  African  race  of 
bushmen  selected  females  for  mates  with  the  most  ridiculously 
large  hips,  so  large  in  fact  that  when  one  seated  herself  she  could 
not  rise  without  assistance.  This  condition  was  known  as  steato- 
pygy.  When  clothing  was  adopted  a  change  in  attraction  could 
occur  from  parts  out  of  sight  which  would  not  be  liable  to  sexual 
selection  to  other  features  not  covered  by  clothing  remaining  in 


29S  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

sight.  Darwin  notes^^  that  absence  of  hair  on  the  body  and  its 
development  on  the  face  had  much  to  do  with  sexual  selection. 
A  New  Zealand  proverb  has  it :  "There  is  no  woman  for  a  hairy 
man." 

That  music  is  the  most  powerful  impeller  of  love  in  females 
is  more  evident  than  that  it  influences  males,  though  women  are 
the  most  frequent  musicians,  and  when  they  cease  their  piano 
practice  after  marriage  they  by  doing  so  declare  that  their  music 
was  to  get  the  beau,  and  that  now  it  is  not  needed  so  much.  Liszt, 
Paderewski  and  other  long-haired,  and  sometimes  unintellectual 
pianists  have  been  actually  beset  by  females  who  raved  over  them. 
At  the  Brooklyn,  New  York,  Academy  of  Music,  in  January,  1902^ 
Kubelic,  the  Bohemian  violinist,  was  clawed  over  by  a  music-mad 
lot  of  women  who  prayed  for  a  kiss  or  a  single  hair  of  his  head. 
Hobson,  the  hero  of  Santiago,  was  also  "hobsonized"  by  the  girls 
till  jealousy  of  other  men  put  a  stop  to  it.  But  this  also  shows 
that  hero  worship  may  centre  upon  some  other  things  than  musical 
ability.  In  either  case  the  women  have  imperfectly  controlled  ner- 
vous systems  and  are  emotional  to  a  dangerous  degree,  particu- 
larly for  their  own  welfare.  This  is  an  exhibition  of  admiration 
closely  reversionary  to  that  of  birds  and  fishes,  and  hence  not  be- 
coming in  the  higher  ape  life. 

The  loves  of  Goethe  indicate  the  complex  nature  of  the  pas- 
sion. He  tired  of  his  sweethearts  as  soon  as  they  were  won,  and 
ceased  to  care  for  them,  but  chivalrouslv  married  one  to  whom 
he  made  no  promises  but  by  whom  he  had  a  child.  Charitas  and 
Kathchen  of  Leipsic,  Frederica  Brion,  the  daughter  of  the  pastor 
of  Sessenhein,  a  beautiful,  simple  country  girl  to  whom  he  made 
fierce  love.  "To  win  a  heart  was  rapture,  to  possess  it  when  won, 
satiety."  According  to  Goethe's  own  record,  he  suddenly  awoke 
to  a  consciousness  that  "his  love  for  Frederica  is  but  a  dream,  and 
when  he  beholds  her  in  contrast  with  city  maids  at  Strasburg  he 
realizes  that  the  simple  country  maid  is  not  fitted  to  be  the  life 
companion  of  the  Goethe  that  is  to  be."  Grimm  says,  "to  have 
broken  the  heart  of  such  a  maiden  was  inhuman."  Goethe  thought 
little  of  her,  did  not  answer  her  letters,  and  only  sought  a  balm 
for  his  wounded  conscience.    Next  was  "Lotte,"  of  the  "Sorrows 

^Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  II,  p.  359. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE. 


299 


of  Werther."  She  was  Charlotte  the  betrothed  of  Kestner, 
Goethe's  friend.  She  was  indifferent  and  he  had  the  decency  not 
to  bother  her,  but  wrote  of  suicide.  The  unattainable  was  charm- 
ing. Thackeray  wrote  a  parody  on  the  ''Sorrows  of  Werther," 
the  verses  ending  with :  ''Then  he  blew  his  silly  brains  out  and 
they  placed  him  on  a  shutter.  But  like  a  well-conducted  person 
she  went  on  cutting  bread  and  butter." 

"Lili,"  Frau  von  Stein,  and  finally  Christine,  were  the  later 
ones. 

In  radical  opposition  to  Goethe's  method  of  loving  there  are 
men  who  could  not  stand  the  slightest  rebuff  or  intimation  that 
they  were  not  liked,  they  would  instantly  give  up  the  chase. 

Dante  was  married  to  a  notorious  scold,  and  when  he  was  in 
exile  he  had  no  desire  to  see  her,  although  she  was  the  mother  of 
his  six  children.  Shakespeare  lost  the  sympathies  of  the  world 
by  marrying  Anne  Hathaway,  a  woman  eight  years  his  senior, 
who  was  coarse  and  ignorant.  Lord  Bacon  enjoyed  but  little 
domestic  bliss,  and  "loved  not  to  be  with  his  partner."  Milton 
was  not  great  in  the  character  of  husband  and  father.  We  read  of 
him  that  his  first  wife  was  disgusted  with  his  gloomy  house,  and 
soon  ran  away  from  him,  and  his  daughters  were  left  to  grow 
up  utterly  neglected.  Moliere  was  married  to  a  wife  who  made 
him  miserable,  and  Rousseau  lived  a  most  wretched  life  with  his 
wife.  Dryden  "married  discord  in  a  noble  wife,"  and  Addison 
sold  himself  to  a  cross-grained  old  countess,  who  made  him  pay 
dearly  for  all  she  gave  him.  Steele,  Sterne,  Churchill,  Coleridge, 
Byron  and  Shelley  were  all  married  unhappily,  and  Bulwer  and 
Dickens  have  been  known  by  all  the  world  as  indifferent  husbands. 
Sir  Walter  Raleigh  married  a  beautiful  girl  eighteen  years  his 
junior,  and  she  adored  him  with  increasing  ardor  to  the  very 
last.  Dr.  Johnson's  wife  was  old  enough  to  be  his  mother,  but 
"he  continued  to  be  under  the  illusions  of  the  wedding  day  until 
she  died  at  the  age  of  64,"  he  being  only  43.  Shelley's  first  mar- 
riage was  unfortunate  but  his  second  was  a  model  of  happiness. 

Gilbert  a  Becket  forgot  his  Saracen  lady  love,  the  one  who 
helped  him  to  escape,  until  she  found  him  by  means  of  the  only 
two  English  words  she  knew,  "London"  and  "Gilbert,"  which 
she  repeated  in  her  travels  until  she  came  to  the  city,  and,  finally. 


300  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  her  lover.  These  were  the  parents  of  the  strenuous  and  vain 
Thomas  a  Becket.  Infatuation  may  be  one-sided  or  mutual,  some- 
times chivalry  pleads  successfully  where  often  wrong  is  done  in 
other  cases.  American  medical  students  in  Vienna  were  con- 
stantly becoming  entangled  with  the  daughters  of  boarding  house 
keepers  and  domestics ;  often  these  young  men  were  away  from 
home  for  the  first  time  in  their  lives.  Life-long  consequences 
followed  sometimes  with  paternal  chilliness,  but  marriages  were 
more  frequent  than  desertions  of  sweethearts,  as  in  the  grissette 
customs  of  the  Latin  Quarter  of  Paris,  among  students  from  all 
countries. 

The  transient  nature  of  the  affection  of  Henry  VIII  of  Eng- 
land was  a  phase  of  general  hoggishness  and  his  murderous  ca- 
reer was  consistent  with  his  low  nature  generally.  But  even  he 
tried  to  make  a  show  of  justification,  and  sought  pretexts  and 
excuses  as  did  Nero. 

The  animality  of  a  few  has  brought  nations  to  slaughter,  as 
when  Darius  was  urged  to  war  against  Greece  by  Atrossa,  who 
wished  to  have  Grecian  women  for  slaves.  Hunger,  lust  and 
plunder  moved  tribe  against  tribe  and  caused  migration  and  amal- 
gamation, increase  and  decrease  of  population.  The  forays  of 
wild  animals  were  caused  by  hunger  mostly,  and  the  derived  de- 
sires were  added  as  incentives  to  movements  of  the  human  de- 
scendents  of  wild  animals.  The  general  grab  instinct  is  at  the 
root  of  all  activity  of  races,  however  disguised. 

Monogamy  may  be  the  recognized  and  conventional  method 
of  pairing  in  a  country  and  in  many  cases  be  observed  ostensibly 
but  not  in  reality,  and  a  sense  of  duty  and  circumstances  may  com- 
pel it  in  animals  as  well  as  man. 

There  are  instances  of  constancy  to  the  memory  of  a  dead  or 
even  deserting  spouse,  of  single  love  for  lifetime  and  of  extreme 
inconstancy  in  others.  If  acquired  traits  are  transmissible,  such 
as  faithfulness,  it  is  most  likely  to  be  the  product  of  maturer  mar- 
riages. For  instance,  if  desirable  traits  are  inheritable  they  are 
most  likely  to  have  been  developed  in  riper  years  by  both  parents. 
The  mating  of  the  very  young  might  result  in  offspring  less  likely 
to  develop  mental  traits  depending  upon  evolved  brain  states  fav- 
ored by  later  unions. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  3OI 

The  extreme  range  of  marital  methods  during  the  ages  from 
promiscuity,  incest  to  monogamy  occurs  among  animals  as  well 
as  man.  Cleopatra  became  the  wife  of  her  younger  brother 
Ptolemy,  according  to  Egyptian  custom.  As  to  loving  more  than 
one  person  at  a  time  we  have  the  pretense  of  it  at  least  in  oriental 
harems,  and  one  after  another,  or  one  at  a  time,  in  the  instances  of 
widowhood  and  remarriages.  A  Turk  may  find  a  saving  of 
jnoney  and  worry  in  following  the  civilized  monogamous  method. 
Undoubtedly  occasional  Mussulman  wives  have  been  too  jealous 
to  permit  another  wife  in  defiance  of  the  prophet's  teaching.  With 
oriental,  occidental,  white,  black,  brown  or  yellow  races  alike, 
jealousy  reigns.  Ten  thousand  years  ago  in  ancient  Babylon  the 
courts  and  harems  were  embroiled  in  intrigues  and  treachery,  in 
faithlessness  and  jealousies.  Shakespeare's  lines  were  as  applica- 
ble then  as  now,  when  he  speaks  of 

"The  venom  clamors  of  a  jealous  woman 
Poison  more  deadly  than  a  mad  dog's  tooth." 

The  Hippocratic  oath  administered  to  physicians  to  raise  them 
to  a  higher  plane  of  skill  and  morality  bound  them  to  treat  women 
with  propriety. 

Among  the  Pennsylvania  and  New  Amsterdam  Dutch  settlers 
the  practice  of  bundling,  as  mentioned  by  Washington  Irving  in 
The  Knickerbockers  and  by  other  writers,  appears  to  have  pre- 
vailed, and  being  accepted  as  a  cvtstom  no  wrong  could  be  seen  in 
it.  In  fact  in  some  localities  unfruitfulness  was  a  justification  for 
terminating  a  courtship.  Individual  idiosyncracies  are  quite  com- 
mon in  love  relations,  there  are  instances  of  complete  repugnance 
of  the  basic  exhibition  associated  with  pure  love.  A  gay  Lothario 
who  was  beaten  over  the  head  with  a  club  was  thereafter  impotent 
with  any  save  his  own  wife.  The  mental  impression  rather  than 
the  physical  beating  working  the  change.  Darwin  in  studying 
savage  life  claims  that  morality  has  been  instituted  by  club  law. 
Fear  has  much  to  do  with  decency  and  the  habit  once  introduced 
can  be  intensified  and  finally  inherited  and  become  natural  to  cer- 
tain descendants.  Its  absence  in  individuals  can  be  due  to  atavism 
or  reversion  to  primitive  states,  just  as  a  case  of  idiocy  can  occur 
unexpectedly  in  a  family. 

The  imagination  and  mental  affinity  at  times  are,  potent  to 


302  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

build  up  or  influence  ardent  attachments.  Admiration  is  largely 
concerned  in  attraction,  the  love  of  approbation  and  mutual  admi- 
ration are  inducements  to  affection  and  admiration  can  be  built 
upon  being  admired  by  another.  A  lady  used  to  defend  herself 
from  her  husband's  outbursts  of  anger  by  reading  his  old  love 
letters  aloud  to  him.  He  would  say  that  he  would  like  to  have  a 
large  portrait,  with  explanatory  footnotes  and  a  glossary  of  the 
inside  of  his  head  when  he  wrote  them.  One  letter  mentioned  the 
long  bitter  separation  of  twelve  hours.  The  "stirpiculture"  non- 
sense of  the  Oneida  community,  whereby  a  superior  race  was  to 
be  cultivated,  died  out  in  time.  Its  theory  was  debasing  and 
would  have  resulted  in  a  tribe  of  lunatics  had  not  nature  sup- 
pressed the  free  love  degradation.  Social  theorists  frequently 
start  with  some  silly  sexual  revolutionary  notion  they  try  to  foist 
upon  their  dupes.  The  Spartan  physical  endurance  selective  pro- 
cess resulted  in  nothing  finally.  Hogs,  boars,  horses,  oxen  and 
dogs  may  be  bred  by  such  methods,  but  intellects  must  descend 
from  better  ancestry  if  they  are  to  improve,  and  even  physical 
defects  may  be  associated  with  higher  intelligence,  as  in  the  cases 
of  Gibbon,  Poe,  Tom  Hood  and  Herbert  Spencer. 

Mules  do  not  breed  among  themselves,  although  the  female 
mule  will  occasionally  produce  offspring  with  the  male  horse  or 
ass.  Nor  are  hybrids  mutually  fertile  between  other  members  of 
the  equine  family.  Among  hybrid  preferences  Darwin-*^  notes  the 
blackbird  and  thrush  and  the  black  grouse  and  pheasant  prefer- 
ring one  another,  and  cites  instances  of  forsaking  mates  for 
strange  and  incongruous  males,  as  a  white  lady  Sunday  school 
teacher  being  smitten  with  a  Chinese  pupil.  Perverted  tastes  are 
common  to  animals  and  man  in  some  degree  and  in  isolated  in- 
stances. A  Wyoming  ranchero  tells  of  two  male  cats  reducing  a 
forlorn  and  weaker  Thomas  to  perverted  submission.  Darwin 
further  notes  that  strange  attachments  and  antipathies  are  formed 
more  often  by  female  domesticated  and  sometimes  wild  animals. 
A  bird  fancier  claims'  that  when  two  male  canaries  are  placed  in 
a  cage  with  a  female  mating  will  not  occur  until  a  male  is  with- 
drawn. The  female  dotteral  is  a  plover  larger  and  more  brilliant 
than  the  male  and  this  exception  to  the  male  being  the  more  at- 

'*'0p.  Cit.,  p.  109. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  303 

tractive  is  associated  with  stupidity,  for  the  dotteral  is  so  named 
because  the  bird  foolishly  allows  the  approach  of  captors. 

John  D.  Caton  tells  of  the  unnatural  attachment  of  a  wapiti 
deer  and  a  Durham  heifer.-'^  The  deer  was  raised  with  cattle  and 
the  heifer  had  not  seen  a  bull.  Both  were  equally  attached  with, 
of  course,  no  impregnation.  He  also  tells  of  a  sand  hill  crane 
manifesting  a  great  attraction  for  pigs  which  did  not  reciprocate 
the  interest.  A  Hawaiian  goose  used  to  brood  a  couple  of  young 
pigs  and  protect  them  with  fury,  and  they  obe3^ed  her  orders  with- 
out hesitation.  Dudgeon,  in  Nature,  subsequently  reported  the 
instance  of  a  cat  adopting  five  young  rats. 

Closely  related  to  perversions  are  other  physiological  miscon- 
ceptions, as  when  a  stomach  or  liver  irregular  action  induces  alco- 
hol or  a  narcotic  to  be  taken.  There  are  the  perverted  cravings 
of  pregnancy  and  hysteria,  in  the  latter  associated  with  contor- 
tions and  capricious  behavior.  When  chalk  is  eaten  by  girls  it  has 
been  compared  to  the  craving  of  chickens  for  ca^lcareous  sub- 
stances necessary  to  form  their  egg  shells.  This  ''pica,"  as  the 
perverted  craving  is  called,  may  be  an  indication  as  well  that  lime 
salts  are  needed  in  bone  formation,  but  cravings  for  coals  and 
slate  pencils,  with  other  absurd  appetites  are  as  frequent. 

Woman  has  been  property  in  all  ages,  her  weakness  invited  the 
strong  to  capture  her,  just  as  the  stronger  subjugate  the  weak  in 
all  races,  and  regardless  of  sex.  Where  the  woman  was  the 
stronger,  either  individually  and  exceptionally,  she  has  been  un- 
disturbed, and  in  a  matriarchate,  or  where  woman  are  governors, 
it  is  through  circumstances  that  cause  her  to  be  practically 
stronger.  Masculinity  and  muscle  being  reverenced  the  woman 
is  in  the  background.  The  folly  of  denying  the  female  half  of  the 
race  any  position  it  is  competent  to  fill  appears  in  expecting  to 
produce  an  exalted  and  a  healthy  minded  progeny  from  a  race 
partly  enslaved.  As  intelligence  increases  the  woman  is  permit- 
ted to  earn  her  own  living  in  formerly  untried  ways.  Her  free- 
dom teaches  us  that  she  has  many  capabilities  that  were  formerly 
ignored.  Of  course  there  are  physiological  impediments!  to 
women  ever  filling  some  positions  now  occupied  by  men,  but  in- 
stead of  refusing  women  advancement  for  such  reasons  let  her 

"  American  Naturalist,  Apr.  1883,  p.  359. 


304  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

try  anything  she  desires  in  the  way  of  work,  and  her  fitness  or 
unfitness  will  be  demonstrated  by  natural  selection.  The  reason 
woman  is  held  inferior  is  because  she  had  not  the  strength  to  as- 
sert herself,  and  for  millions  of  years  before  humanity  appeared 
our  male  animal  ancestry,  with  occasional  exceptions,  have  ruled 
the  female.  And  where,  as  among  some  spiders,  this  was  not  the 
case  the  female  spiders  were  the  larger  and  stronger  and  prove 
the  truth  of  my  contention  that  the  weakness  of  women  has  in 
Asiatic  countries  put  her  into  harems,  and  only  as  intelligence 
and  civilization  advances  can  her  masters  grudgingly  be  induced 
to  relinquish  their  control.  In  a  few  states  of  the  American 
Union  women  suffrage  has  been  enacted.  No  matter  what  the 
immediate  results  may  be  or  how  unfitted  women  may  be  to 
exercise  the  right  to  vote  and  to  dispose  of  her  own  property,  such 
legislation  is  a  step  in  the  right  direction  and  eventually  will 
produce  results  leading  to  a  freer,  more  enlightened  and  a  better 
race  physically  and  mentally,  though  fears  are  expressed  that 
priests  may  control  the  votes  of  their  women  parishioners. 

Spanish  and  other  Latin  chaperonage  shows  how  little  confi- 
dence there  was  in  entrusting  portable  and  perishable  property 
to  its  own  care,  and  Anglo-Saxon  countries  where  such  espionage 
IS  minimized  have  more  trust  in  the  honor  of  men  and  innocence 
of  girls,  however  misplaced  at  times  such  beliefs  may  prove.  The 
bare  fact  that  in  America  there  is  a  freedom  of  intercourse  be- 
tween the  young  of  both  sexes  with  exceptional  occasions  for  re- 
gret, and  all  sorts  of  restrictions  are  put  upon  meetings  of  males 
and  females  in  Latin  countries  with  the  Gil  Bias  and  Decameron 
results  quite  prevalent,  tend  to  demonstrate  differences  in  ideas 
and  salacity  of  races,  to  some  extent  due  to  climate,  but  also  un- 
changed by  conditions  that  might  seem  to  favor  but  really  repress, 
and  to  repress  apparently  but  in  reality  to  favor  the  illicit.  The 
little  respect  for  women  in  France  comes  from  her  having  no  leg- 
islative champions.  When  she  becomes  able  to  influence  votes  la 
femme  will  be  greatly  advanced  to  a  real  position  which  now  the 
politeness  of  the  French  males  pretend  to  accord  her  with  all  in- 
sincerity and  hypocrisy. 

Some  "advanced"  female  talks  of  a  time  coming  when  women 
will  rise  against  tyrant  males.     No  matter  how  vilely  women  are 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE, 


305 


treated  such  a  time  will  never  come,  for  mothers  and  sons,  and 
all  the  relationships  of  the  sexes,  even  aside  from  sweethearts, 
will  prevent  such  nonsense  as  surely  as  that  the  right  and  left 
hands  will  not  fight. 

Young  females  should  not  be  permitted  to  go  out  into  the 
world  uninstructed  as  lambs  among  wolves.  They  are  apt  to  get 
distorted  ideas  from  the  ignorant  or  designing.  Like  the  high 
bred  female  dog  that  throws  herself  away  on  a  cur  of  low  degree 
because  raised  with  it,  so  merely  sitting  next  to  one  at  a  dining 
table  may  result  in  incongruous  mating,  such  as  was  mentioned 
by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes-^  in  the  deformed  little  Bostonian 
winning  the  heart  of  the  pretty  young  girl  boarder.  So  circum- 
stances and  opportunity  are  potent,  and  crude  notions  about  des- 
tiny, and  matches  being  foreordained  are  nonsense. 

Grumpy  old  Carlyle  says  'Xove  is  not  altogether  a  delirium, 
yet  it  has  many  points  in  common  therewith,"  and  Shakespeare's 
Rosalind  says  it  is  "a.  kind  of  madness  that  needs  the  dark  house 
and  the  whip."  It  was  probably  the  philosophical  Goethe  who 
suggested  the  lines  of  Schiller  to  the  effect  that  until  philosophy 
ruled  universally  the  world  would  continue  to  be  governed  by 
hunger  and  love,  and  this  all-important  influence  is  absurdly 
avoided  by  metaphysicians.  Turning  the  back  upon  the  truths  of 
nature  is  no  way  to  understand  them,  but  the  people  dare  not  think 
for  themselves  and  hence  repeat  like  parrots  what  their  masters 
in  state  and  church  permit  them  to  say,  or  think  or  read.  The 
truth  frightens  these  leaders,  for  it  uncovers  their  schemes  and 
threatens  their  grab  of  intellects  and  purses.  Another  piece  of 
silliness  is  the  inverting  of  cause  and  effect,  as  in  the  case  of  one 
demagogue  physician  who  wrote  an  essay  in  which  he  took  the 
ground  that  the  desire  for  children  was  the  cause  of  the  sexual 
function,  when  were  it  not  for  the  sexual  desire  the  earth  would 
be  rapidly  depopulated. 

Dr.  Paulo  Montegazza-^  says,  among  many  things,  good,  bad 
and  indifferent,  that  for  one  genius  killed  by  love  there  are  hun- 
dreds who  owe  to  it  their  greatest  inspiration ;  the  widower 
usually  makes  a  good  husband ;  one  of  the  characteristics  of  love 
is  injustice ;    one  may  love  more  than  once,  the  loved  woman  is 

^  Professor  at  the  Breakfast  Table. 
'^  The  Physiology  of  Love. 


306  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

always  an  angel,  the  one  not  loved  is  an  ordinary  female.  The 
bulk  of  his  '^scientific"  discourse  on  love  is  the  usual  rhapsodical 
sententiousness  without  analytical  depth.  Though  occasionally  a 
romancer  will  phrase  what  is  well  worth  investigating,  such  as 
"friendship  based  upon  past  love  is  the  most  enduring,"  and  an 
old  song  has  it,  ''the  world  is  full  of  beauty  when  the  heart  is  full 
of  love,"  and  this  is  a  truism  based  upon  the  general  exaltation 
of  the  senses  akin  to  what  occurs  in  simple  mania.  Good  for- 
tune may  effect  something  of  the  same  experience,  showing  that 
other  things  than  love  can  produce  the  general  feeling  of  well 
being,  though  love  is  more  intense  in  its  influence.  Melancholia 
exhibits  the  direct  reverse  of  this.  The  depression  being  general 
the  world  is  hideous  and  full  of  suffering.  The  antics  in  novels  of 
love  episodes  remind  a  naturalist  of  the  struttings,  scrapings, 
fighting  for  possession  of  the  mate.  The  dramas,  comedies  and 
romances  of  life  are  classifiable  under  turmoil  for  food  or  mating. 
Hunger  and  love  centralize  everything  we  may  do,  and  concerned 
with  them  is  the  evolution  of  all  thought,  all  senses,  feeling,  mem- 
ory and  acts  of  all  kinds.  Sometimes  according  to  privation  of  one 
or  the  other  all  thought  and  acts  may  be  controlled  by  either  feel- 
ing, and  all  faculties  may  be  subordinate  thereto. 

Great  sexual  development  has  been  associated  with  much  men- 
tal vigor.  It  is  the  animality  zest  that  gives  force  to  character. 
Not  that  intellect  is  dependent  upon  sexual  vigor,  but  force  or 
energy,  the  driving  power,  health,  strength  which  puts  intellect 
into  acts,  is  associated  with  the  animal  development,  generally. 
Eunuchs  are  proverbially  lazy.  Some  men  have  the  lowest  de- 
velopment of  sexual  instincts  and  cannot  experience  what  is 
known  as  love,  because  the  emotion  is  in  higher  life  made  up  of 
too  many  complex  elements,  often  the  very  best  mental  essence 
of  the  man.  While  the  sexual  basis  normally  remains  the  super- 
structure is  often  all  that  is  seen  or  admitted. 

The  parallels  of  hunger  and  love  are  in  the  honeymoon  ban- 
quet, as  savages  gorge  themselves  and  satiety  follows.  Indiffer- 
ence appears  to  follow,  but  it  is  not  such,  it  is  akin  to  the  hungry 
man  sitting  down  to  regularity  of  life,  and  his  starvation  being 
over  he  does  not  realize  that  his  hunger  is  steadily  appeased  and 
hence  not  urgent.     "We  do  not  miss  the  water  till  the  well  runs 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  307 

dry"  are  the  words  of  a  popular  old  song.  Absence  intensifies  real 
affection  and  renews  the  hunger.  But  there  is  great  variability 
in  appetites,  some  are  sparing  and  light  eaters,  others  are  gour- 
mands. ''In  the  spring  the  young  man's  fancy  lightly  turns  to 
thoughts  of  love,"  and  this  erethism  of  the  season  is  that  of  the 
pairing  season  of  the  frogs  and  birds.  All  animal  life  is  astir  at 
the  breeding  season  and  every  animal  is  at  his  best  as  a  fighter,  in 
general  activity  and  intelligence.  For  this  reason  the  lovelorn 
poet  is  "inspired,"  and  the  winsome  ways  of  the  lover  are  in- 
creased, and  all  the  senses  and  emotions  are  exalted  as  in  acute 
mania.  Unpleasant  things  beget  dislike  and  pleasant  matters  in- 
duce liking,  so,  other  things  equal,  the  one  who  can  offer  most  of 
this  world's  goods  has  the  advantage  in  love  as  in  other  things, 
though  peculiar  nooks  and  corners  of  evolution  are  found  where 
wealth  is  often  a  great  disadvantage.  Certainly  it  does  not  insure 
true  affection  in  all  cases. 

An  effectual  answer  to  the  possibility  of  any  one  loving  twice 
in  a  life  time  occurs  in  multiple  marriages,  and  as  an  example  of 
intellectual  sentiment  being  engaged  in  the  passion  at  times  may 
be  called  the  sense  of  duty  that  survives  when  all  else  may  have 
departed.  The  ardent  attachments  and  murderous  jealousies  of 
sunny  lands  can  be  put  in  the  category  of  spring  awakening, 
whether  annual  or  as  in  Greenland,  not  only  annual,  but  intensi- 
fied by  the  previous  six  months'  darkness  and  absence  of  the  sun. 
Then  jealousy  need  not  be  merely  a  sexual  concern,  for  it  may 
exist  in  the  absence  of  love  as  an  interference  with  property,  as 
a  resentment,  and  is  then  mere  envy  or  hatred  of  what  tends  to 
dispossess.  Intense  ardor  is  infrequent  in  northern  countries, 
and  sentiment  of  rather  an  intellectual  sort  may  cause  very  young 
women  to  prefer  an  old  man,  but  the  bulk  of  young  femininity 
prefers  the  absence  of  disparity.  Marriages  of  conveniences  pro- 
duce grotesque  unions  at  times,  with  unhappiness  in  proportion 
to  the  looked  for  enjoyment  of  the  wealth.  The  illusion  being 
removed  the  awakening  has  been  unpleasant  enough. 

When  an  experience  arises  for  the  first  time  in  the  life  of  an 
individual  and  it  happens  to  be  one  that  has  perpetually  arisen  in 
the  species  at  some  time  in  the  course  of  the  individual  life,  such 
as  recur  at  puberty,  a  love  experience,  for  example,  then  the  feel- 


3o8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ing  is  accompanied  by  a  consciousness  that  something  Uke  this  new 
sensation  had  occurred  to  the  person  ages  ago.  This  awakening 
of  an  organic  memory,  a  racial  inherited  inborn  remembrance,  can 
be  best  accounted  for  physically,  chemically  and  developmentally. 
The  organs  and  their  attachments  to  the  central  nervous  system 
gradually  build  up  and  connect  with  the  seats  of  consciousness  in 
the  gray  matter  of  the  brain,  until  the  machinery  is  adjusted,  on 
the  basis  of  what  has  been  inherited  from  long  lines  of  ancestors, 
to  react  to  the  particular  impression ;  it  does  not  do  so  until  the 
machinery  is  complete,  and  the  reflexes  are  ready  to  respond,  then 
the  impression  exerts  its  traditional  effect  as  it  has  on  millions  of 
progenitors  for  millions  of  years,  and  organic  memory  recognizes 
the  effect  as  one  consonant  with  ages  of  experience,  or  at  least 
something  occurs  in  consciousness  equivalent  to  an  awakened 
memory,  a  sensation  of  something  having  taken  place  that  is  suit- 
able to  the  construction  of  the  body,  brain  and  mind.  So  with  eat- 
ing and  other  functions  when  performed  readily  for  the  first  time, 
the  pleasure  aroused  appears  to  be  perfectly  natural  and  as  though 
it  had  been  experienced  for  ages. 

If  simultaneously  sensations  (molecular  movements  recog- 
nized in  consciousness)  occur  in  separate  parts  of  the  body  and 
like  results  ensue  from  the  sensation  in  each  part,  such  as  two 
cells  hungering  or  sexually  excited  at  the  same  instant  in  the 
course  of  evolution  eventually,  either  in  the  individual  or  the  spe- 
cies, often  in  both,  some  mode  of  nerve  communication  is  insti- 
tuted and  centres  are  informed  of  the  excitement.  In  this  way 
all  the  cells  would  unite  to  exhibit  that  excitement  in  the  colony 
or  the  individuals  composing  the  colony,  and  the  ''nation,"  to 
use  an  analogy,  would  act  as  one  man.  Then  if  the  elaborating 
eating  cells,  the  enteric  parts,  came  to  be  excited,  all  the  rest  of 
the  bodv  cells  would,  feel  the  excitement  and  wake  up  to  a  realiza- 
tion of  the  likelihood  that  each  other  cell  in  all  the  other  parts  of 
the  person  would  soon  be  fed.  Cells  also  specially  concerned  in 
reproduction  in  a  similar  or  comparable  excitement  could  extend 
their  feelings  to  every  other  cell  in  the  body,  because  all  cells  have 
the  primitive  hunger  and  reproductive  faculties.  So  also  satiety 
or  the  feeling  of  rest  accompanying  the  gratification  in  each  in- 
stance.   When  an  organism  has  a  complex  nervous  system  capa- 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE. 


309 


ble  of  sustaining  compound  impressions  based  upon  a  primary 
experience  then  the  entire  colony  of  cells  to  the  remotest  parts 
of  the  body  participate  in  the  gratification,  as  in  the  instance  of 
the  union  of  admiration,  respect,  gratified  self-love,  vanity  and 
higher  emotions  with  what  is  ordinarily  called  love.  The  ecstacy 
is  more  complete  when  universal. 

Mental  derangements  are  associated  with  the  function  some- 
times in  illy  understood  ways,  for  example,  in  the  insanity  of 
pubescence  known  as  hebephrenia  there  is  a  general  failure  of 
the  intellect  to  develop  properly  and  the  virility  of  the  grown  man 
appears  with  the  silliness  of  the  young  boy,  the  mind  has  not 
grown  with  the  body,  and  the  self-abuse  is  not  a  cause  but  a  con- 
sequence of  this  mental  failure  to  develop ;  similarly  other  exhibi- 
tions of  the  kind  in  children  are  often  due  to  a  mental  cause  rather 
than  the  abuse  being  the  cause  of  the  mental  degradation.  An 
insanity  called  post-connubial  ceases  to  be  mysterious  when  we 
regard  it  as  an  agitated  melancholia  from  exhaustion,  it  promptly 
recovers  as  a  rule  with  rest  and  absence  of  the  exciting  cause. 

Alcohol  excites  erotism  by  its  direct  blood  intoxication  or  ox- 
idation of  cells  and  alienists  are  much  interested  in  the  marital 
infidelity  delusions  of  chronic  alcoholic  insanity.  With  the  most 
remarkable  frequency  the  person  made  insane  by  alcohol  imagines 
that  his  wife  is  unfaithful,  and  sometimes  murders  her  in  that  un- 
just belief.  I  have  observed  this  delusion  in  head-injury  cases  in 
which  there  was  no  alcoholism.  The  alcoholic  is  also  apt  to  think 
he  is  poisoned. 

Illusions  and  delusions  are  easily  recognized  as  being  caused 
by  love.  Faults  are  unobserved,  beauty  ie  seen  where  it  is  not 
and  all  the  favored  one  does  is  approved  of  or  condoned  or  even 
flagrant  defects  are  ignored.  The  reverse  is  also  true,  as  shown 
in  the  expression  that  ''faults  are  thick  where  love  is  thin." 

Other  mental  peculiarities  appear  in  the  course  of  the  sexual 
life  and  development.  In  the  female  climacteric  Clouston^*^  tells 
of  the  mental  changes  sometimes  observed,  and  notes  that  man 
also  during  senility  periods  undergoes  occasional  mental  revolu- 
tions. But  in  women  the  radical  adjustment  of  the  blood  vessel 
system  throughout  the  body  involving  both  the  ovaries  and  the 

'"  Insanity,  p.  388. 


3IO  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

brain,  according  to  the  resisting  power  of  the  individual,  com- 
bined with  certain  special  liabilities  to  irritation  and  its  tendency 
to  manifest  the  irritation  in  certain  ways,  sufficiently  account  for 
mental  aberration  at  this  ''change  of  life"  period.  The  race  has 
become  largely  proof  against  any  particular  mental  or  bodily  dis- 
comfort following  or  accompanying  this  period,  but  in  a  few  there 
is  heart  rapidity,  timidity,  deoression  and  change  of  character, 
with  flushings  ^nd  hot  feelings.  In  some  old  maids  the  ardor  ap- 
pears for  the  first  time,  as  its  basic  functions  are  about  to  disap- 
pear, as  though  the  dying  of  the  functions  created  irritability  of 
the  related  nerves  and  suggested  ideas  these  women  were  stran- 
gers to  previously.  The  orgasm  seems  like  the  final  extension  of 
participation  by  the  general  body  more  or  less,  the  latent  repro- 
ductive faculty  in  other  than  specialized  cells  is  also  evoked,  and 
thus  the  supervening  exhaustion  and  rejuvenation,  the  restfulness, 
mental  clearness  and  general  lavage  are  likewise  explained.  The 
relation  between  sexual  and  olfactory  illusions  and  hallucinations 
is  of  clinical  frequency  and  points  to  the  primitive  location  of  sex- 
ual desire  in  the  olfactory  centres,  as  it  certainly  is  in  many  quad- 
rupeds. The  optic  sense,  however,  is  the  prime  associate  of  the  sex- 
ual in  the  developed  bimana.  The  possibility  of  complete  repres- 
sion of  any  single  animal  propensity  would  be  a  physiological 
study.  We  know  that  hunger  can  be  antagonized  by  a  starvation 
process  within  certain  limits  and  excretory  functions  may  be  wo- 
fully  neglected,  but  that  the  sexual  appetite  may  be  extinguished 
by  religious  methods  is  doubtful  and  deserves  to  be  regarded  with 
suspicion. 

The  masculine  orgasm  is  ejaculatory,  excretory,  and  empties 
vessels  concerned  in  retaining  spermatozoa  and  accessory  sub- 
stances, and  the  intensity  varies  greatly  according  to  circum- 
stances. Mentality  may  be  concerned  to  the  extent  of  intensifying 
or  cutting  short  the  orgasm.  Such  a  thing  as  too  much  affection, 
fear  of  consequences,  etc.,  may  repress  the  major  exhibitions  of 
the  act  or  diminish  part  of  the  function.  The  mental  association 
is  so  radical  and  so  bound  up  is  the  entire  brain  in  the  reproduc- 
tive function  that  it  ceases  to  be  a  mystery  that  the  imagination 
should  run  riot  where  this  faculty  is  concerned.  Your  vagrant 
thoughts  on  these  subjects  that  annoy  and  often  disgust  you,  are 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  3II 

mere  inherited  brain  workings  for  which  neither  you  nor  the 
legions  of  your  progenitors  are  responsible,  as  all  alike  have  ob- 
tained them  from  anterior  animal  and  plant  processes,  and  they 
from  the  same  causes  that  impel  hydrogen  and  oxygen  to  combine, 
or  nitrogen  and  oxygen  to  flow  away  from  each  other,  as  states  of 
environment  favor  the  meetings  and  partings.  The  participation 
of  every  cell  in  the  body  in  the  excitement  under  favorable  condi- 
tions, and  its  failure  to  engage  but  a  part  of  the  cells  and  nervous 
system,  arise  from  circumstances  and  previous  organization  com- 
bined to  make  the  sensation  general  or  restricted. 

J.  Marion  Sims,  the  surgeon,  naively  narrates  his  courtship 
depression  and  exaltation. ^^  When  Shakespeare  said  that  *'men 
have  died  and  worms  have  eaten  them,  but  not  for  love,"  he  did 
not  necessarily  endorse  the  views  of  one  of  his  characters.  He 
makes  Ophelia  a  melancholiac  from  her  love  disappointment  and, 
though  not  generally  known,  such  griefs  are  among  the  most  fre- 
quent exciting  causes  of  insanity  in  those  predisposed  to  break 
down. 

Hammond^^  quotes  Lisfranc  that  ''man  places  his  dignity  in  his 
virile  organs,"  though  this  may  be  interpreted  that  virility,  force 
of  character,  the  powerful  man,  has  a  well  developed  physiology 
in  its  chief  divisions  of  assimilation,  etc.  The  woman,  too,  as 
such,  and  as  a  mother  reaches  her  highest  physiological  develop- 
ment, and  while  the  male  develops  in  one  way  the  female  does  in 
another  and  the  law  of  differentiation  determines  that  the  two 
shall  be  unlike,  though  in  what  ways  natural  and  sexual  selection 
will  decide,  in  spite  of  all  the  theorizing  of  those  who  would 
reduce  woman  to  slavery,  or  those  who  would  prefer  that  she 
should  do  all  that  the  man  can  do. 

The  higher  the  type  of  man  and  woman  the  more  exalted  will 
be  their  views  upon  all  subjects,  including  those  connected  with 
basic  functions,  and  the  more  complex  is  apt  to  be  their  love  en- 
joyments and  sufferings. 

The  shock  of  a  discovery  of  flagrante  has  unseated  the  mind. 
An  instance  I  can  recall  reduced  the  husband  to  temporary  demen- 
tia, his  memory  was  gone,  he  did  not  know  his  own  name  or  busi- 

''  My  Life,  J.  M.  Sims. 
^^  Insanity,  p.  458. 


312  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ness,  and  recognizing  the  transient  nature  of  this  form  of  insanity 
I  advised  precautions  against  an  outburst  of  fury  when  he  recov- 
ered. He  had  retained  some  abiHty  to  be  irritated  when  the  dis- 
turbing matter  was  mentioned.  A  Minnesota  editor  was  engaged 
to  be  married  and  the  discovery  was  made  that  the  person  he  was 
to  marry  was  a  male.  The  announcement  unsettled  the  reason  of 
the  editor  and  he  drank  himself  to  death.  When  incompatibility 
is  a  plea  for  divorce  on  a  discovered  physical  deficiency  the  death 
of  the  associated  love  shows  at  once  upon  what  the  affection  rests, 
though  not  exclusively.  The  more  intense  the  mental  concern 
the  higher  the  love,  but  the  greater  the  shock  of  disappointment. 
A  stupid  person  could  not  be  so  disturbed.  The  differences  be- 
tween animals  in  their  courtships  resemble  those  of  human  affairs 
of  the  kind.  The  monogamous  and  the  polygamous  inclinations 
of  species,  the  ferocity  of  some  matings  and  the  gentleness  of 
others  in  the  same  genera  all  develop  from  the  promiscuity  of  the 
ancestral  stock  whence  the  species  were  derived.  Circumstances, 
accident,  natural  as  well  as  sexual  selection  originate  all  the  vary- 
ing accompaniments  of  love-making  in  animals  and  men.  The 
secondary  or  accessory  sexual  peculiarities,  as  differences  in  hair 
length,  presence  and  absence  of  beard,  pitch  of  voices,  scents, 
sounds,  sizes,  ornamentation,  glandular  development,  horns  and 
claspers  among  the  many  others  that  could  be  listed,  are  acquired 
additional  matters  that  have  become  attractions  by  association  or 
have  been  converted  into  means  of  gratification.  The  chemical 
desire  being  developed  at  the  same  time  with  senses  to  contribute 
to  the  desire  or  to  comprehend  it,  such  as  the  touch  and  smelling 
senses  and  later  hearing  and  sight,  and  the  development  of  these 
important  special  senses  it  is  conceivable  may  have  been  largely 
due  to  their  stimulation  through  sexual  desire.  It  is  demonstra- 
ble that  all  the  special  senses  are  modifications  of  the  original 
tactile  or  touch  sense  and  nothing  could  be  more  potent  to  evolve 
the  special  senses  than  the  two  emotions  or  desires,  feelings,  or 
sensations,  as  they  may  appear  to  be  from  various  standpoints, 
those  of  hunger  and  love.  The  law  of  association  is  at  work 
also  in  this  development  of  any  accessory  anatomical  or  physi- 
ological sexual  peculiarity  as  much  as  when  what  are  unpleas- 
ant sights  or  sounds  ordinarily  may  be  converted   into  pleasant 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  313 

ones  by  association  with  matters  that  are  pleasant.  For  in- 
stance, an  ugly  face  or  harsh  voice  may  cause  the  heart  to  leap 
for  joy  when  the  possessor  of  these  otherwise  unattractive  pecu- 
liarities is  loved  for  other  reasons. 

Development  of  secondary  sexual  apparatus  .may  take  place 
in  startling  ways,  the  claspers  of  the  ray  are  homologous  with 
quite  different  organs  of  the  mammal.^^  H.  I.  Gorman^*  claims 
that  the  phosphorescence  of  the  lampyridae  originates  in  sexual  at- 
traction of  females  for.  the  males.  Undoubtedly  colors,  scents, 
sounds  and  illumination  are  demonstrably  for  sexual  attraction 
in  insect,  fish,  and  other  animal  life,  to  a  great  degree.  Darwin^*^ 
mentions  the  secondary  sexual  characters  of  birds.  In  the  male 
elephant  two  orifices  in  the  forehead  exude  a  tarry  substance  when 
the  sexual  madness  or  fury  seizes  the  mad  male,  at  certain  seasons 
of  the  year.  The  male  mud  turtle  has  larger  claws  apparently  for 
clasping  purposes  in  union.  A  warty  protuberance  is  developed 
on  the  thumb  of  the  male  frog  during  the  breeding  season  to  assist 
in  holding  the  female,  and  in  some  species  the  whole  fore-arm  be- 
comes enlarged  at  this  time.  The  axis  of  each  pelvic  fin  of  the 
shark  is  developed  into  a  ''clasper"  connected  with  the  reproduc- 
tive functions. ^^  Rays  also  have  these  claspers.  Ancient  fossil 
sharks  had  no  claspers,  so  this  is  a  later  sexual  development  and 
bears  upon  association  in  evolution  conferring  additions  and  mod- 
ifications upon  the  sexual  methods,  and  even  desires,  so  as  to  rad- 
ically change  them.  Urodela  amphibians  have  prehensile  claws 
during  the  breeding  season.  The  hind  foot  of  the  Triton  aids  in 
pursuit  of  the  female  and  is  absorbed  during  the  winter.  The 
human  sebaceous  glands  at  puberty  and  during  or  before  men- 
struation become  enlarged  and  many  young  people  of  about 
eighteen  years  of  age  are  greatly  mortified  at  this  advertisement 
on  their  faces  of  their  continence,  which  they  consider  unsightly, 
tut  to  a  physician  indicates  quite  probable  innocence,  even  though 
ignorance  is  not  always  the  same  thing.  The  odoriferous  glands 
on  the  nose  of  the  deer  are  akin  to  these  human  blemishes.    The 

^American  Naturalist,  Oct.   1886.  p.  904. 

^*  Journal  of  Royal  Microscopical  Society,  Oct.  1880.  " 

^'  Descent  of  Man,  Vol.  II,  p.  36. 

'"Lydeker,  Natural  History,  Vol.  V.  p.  520. 


314  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

antelope  has  a  gland  under  each  eye  and  the  wild-beeste  also, 
marked  by  hair  tufts.  These  are  peculiar  to  the  males  and  are 
checked  by  castration.  Skunks  and  goats  if  castrated  young  do 
not  have  their  usual  odor.  The  musk  of  the  male  deer  in  con- 
nection with  their  herds  running  up  the  wind  enable  locating  of 
their  kind.  The  castoreum  of  the  beaver  is  a  powerful  heart  stim- 
ulant. The  fox  of  India  has  not  the  strong  scent  of  the  European 
fox,  so  hounds  cannot  follow  the  first  so  well.  During  the  mating 
season  the  crocodile  gives  ofif  a  musky  odor  from  submaxillary 
glands. 

The  primary  ancestral  attraction  is  in  the  germ  and  sperm  cells 
like  that  of  hydrogen  for  oxygen,  and  all  the  secondary  apparatus 
have  developed  or  evolved  to  facilitate  this  juncture  of  these  ele- 
mentary organs,  the  germ  and  sperm  cell,  and  acute  sensations 
accumulated  step  by  step  through  association  as  the  sensory  ap- 
paratus became  more  complex,  but  no  matter  how  intricate  and 
how  multiple  the  organs  and  feelings  involved  the  primary  in- 
stinct remains  as  the  base  of  the  highest  and  most  complicated 
exhibitions  of  the  passion,  and  the  atomic  preferences  lie  still 
deeper  and  behind  all  of  it,  the  intense  molecular  affinities  are 
the  causes  of  cell  attraction  and  molecules  are  built  up  by  atoms 
that  prefer  other  atoms,  and  appear  unable  to  exist  singly  and 
apart  from  one  another,  so  that  if  unlike  atoms  cannot  be  secured, 
two  atoms  of  the  same  elementary  nature  will  associate  in  prefer- 
ence to  being  alone,  and  this  could  be  the  basis  of  gregariousness 
of  plants  and  animals,  in  spite  of  temporary  solitary  roamers  and 
apparent  segregation.  A  complete  separation  would  mean  de- 
struction of  the  species,  so  inherently  all  life  is  gregarious.  As 
the  kidneys,  liver,  stomach  and  related  organs  have  been  evolved 
to  facilitate  assimilation,  in  its  last  analysis  it  is  merely  the  inter- 
change of  molecules  and  atomic  construction  of  molecules  that 
constitutes  assimilation  or  eating.  No  more  nor  less  is  the  union 
of  th6  ovum  and  spermatozoon. 

Attraction,  however,  may  not  be  mutual  between  individuals 
of  opposite  or  the  same  sex,  any  more  than  that  the  molecules 
of  all  compounds  can  unite  with  those  of  other  compounds.  Some 
atoms  are  comparatively  inert,  as  are  certain  molecular  combina- 
tions.    One  of  the  most  indifferent  combinations  is  the  sulphate 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  3I5 

of  barium.  The  sexes  may  repel  one  another  or  one  be  distaste- 
ful to  the  other  until  the  requisite,  sometimes  unknown,  change 
occurs  that  enables  attraction  to  be  mutual.  It  is  well  known  to 
chemists  that  an  atom  a  may  not  care  for  the  atoms  b  or  c,  but 
when  b  and  c  are  united  in  one  molecule  a  may  be  irresistably 
drawn  to  that  molecule. 

The  law  of  battle  between  males  for  possession  of  the  females 
may  be  likened  to  the  molecular  or  atomic  clash  in  their  rush  for 
combination,  where  one  compound  exceeds  or  is  stronger  than 
the  other,  so  the  battle  being  to  the  strong  in  natural  selection 
is  also  based  upon  the  greater  force  of  these  chemical  ultimates. 

The  change  of  cartilage  into  bone  may  be  used  to  explain  the 
development  of  the  ova  and  its  attractiveness  for  the  spermatozoa. 
When  a  tissue  has  reached  a  certain  stage  of  chemical  develop- 
ment so  it  may  take  up  further  compounds  and  cause  the  structure 
to  become  more  complex  or  change  its  constituents,  then  a  step  in 
organization  takes  place.  Thus  a  may  have  affinity  for  b  and  a  b 
for  c,  but  if  a  has  not  b  it  cannot  combine  with  c.  So  the  unripe 
ovum  a  does  not  unite  with  the  spermatozoon  c  until  the  a  b  stage 
is  reached.  Until  certain  glandular  structures  are  built  that  have 
affinities  for  animal  and  vegetable  tissues,  there  can  be  no  attrac- 
tion between  the  intestine  and  its  contents,  the  food  and  the  ani- 
mal that  eats  it.  Immature  organs  will  not  assimilate  ripe  ftuit 
nor  can  unripe  fruit  be  assimilated  by  the  fully  organized  diges- 
tive apparatus,  but  when  both  the  alimentary  canal  and  the  food 
are  united  to  one  another  then  digestion  can  occur,  as  the  com- 
pleted ova  and  spermatozoa  combine. 

In  some  ways  the  ova  and  spermatozoa  may  be  regarded  as 
parasites  which  chemically  develop  as  embryo  upon  the  tissues  of 
their  parents,  the  hosts,  through  being  furnished  with  the  essen- 
tials for  a  speedy  development,  where  in  the  evolution  of  the  spe- 
cies these  same  chemical  elements  in  the  environment  instead  of 
in  the  parent  (the  environment  of  the  embryo)  were  slowly  and 
with  difficulty  taken  up  to  build  one  animal  higher  than  another. 

If  A  develops  into  B  and  then  C,  the  germ  and  sperm  cells  of 
A  afford  a  with  affinity  for  b  and  c  which  pabulum  they  find 
already  in  the  tissues  at  hand.     Post-natal  life  carrying  on  the 


3l6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

process  through  adapted  food  which  at  first  is  maternal  milk, 
merely  nutriment  derived  from  the  blood  of  the  parent. 

The  male  and  female  elements  are  complementary  compounds 
which  when  mature  have  affinities,  their  immature,  unbuilt  mol- 
ecular structure  have  not.  One  may  be  of  an  acid  nature  and  an- 
other an  alkaline  and  when  finally  ready  to  unite  the  higher  and 
complete  organic  compound  is  built  to  enable  further  higher  mole- 
cular construction,  and  even  to  the  last  the  adult  man  may  be  re- 
garded as  a  molecule  with  compound  affinities,  but  fundamentally 
they  are  the  same  as  those  of  the  cells. 

In  organisms  that  have  no  sex  (asexual)  the  single  cell  may 
suffice  to  build  up  all  the  molecule,  but  the  male  and  female  ele- 
ments may  exist  in  the  same  animal  and  constitute  that  animal 
asexual  and  hermaphroditic,  but  it  is  a  mere  step  in  the  forma- 
tion of  separate  sexes. 

Another  view  would  be  that  the  molecular  causes  the  cellular 
attraction  in  the  lowest  life  but  where  that  attraction  is  com- 
pounded by  association  with  secondary  organs  and  senses,  the 
parent  or  entire  organism  may  be  also  attracted,  if  not  fixed  as  are 
plants,  and  much  animal  mobility  is  built  upon  the  primitive  sex- 
ual attraction. 

In  plant  fertilization  we  cannot  conceive  of  such  a  thing  as  a 
plant  having  a  desire  for  the  other  sex.  The  union  of  the  two 
sexual  elements  is  apparently  by  chance  but  nevertheless  their 
sex  elements  have  affinities  for  one  another. 

So  the  plant  desire  resides  in  its  sex  elements,  the  seed  and 
pollen,  and  is  chemical  though  the  entire  plant  may  be  grown 
upon  an  adjustment  to  pollen  and  seed  union  and  distribution. 
The  union,  however,  due  to  winds,  birds  or  insects,  appears  to 
be  independent  of  the  plant,  though  in  reality  these  accessory 
methods  of  fertilization  are  what  causes  the  plant  to  survive,  and 
hence  these  seemingly  accidental  means  of  plant  propagation  are 
as  natural  as  other  methods  more  obviously  so. 

A  bisexual  animal  could  develop  into  a  unisexual  through 
environment  changes,  and  a  unisexual  animal  would  develop  from 
the  double  sexcd,  through  one  sexual  organ  in  such  animal  de- 
veloping more  than  th^  other  sexual  organ.  For  example,  if  an 
ovary  and  testes,  or  their  equivalents,  were  contained  in  the  same 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  317 

animal,  soine  of  these  animals  would  develop  better  ovaries,  and 
others  better  testes,  and  imperfect  other  sexual  organs,  just  as 
rudimentary  accessory  apparatus,  such  as  the  clitoris  and  nipples 
are  atrophic  vestiges  of  a  bisexual  state  in  both  man  and  woman. 
Sometimes  hermaphrodism  persists  through  one  ovary  and  one 
testicle  being  preserved  to  greater  or  less  degree,  and  inversion 
of  sex  could  be  based  upon  accessory  organs  being  wrongly  devel- 
oped, as  those  of  a  male  appearing  in  a  female,  as  the  beard  or 
other  feature,  or  mammae  being  large  in  a  male. 

Reproductive  organs  in  higher  animals,  especially  the  testes 
and  ovaries,  may  merely  be  developed  to  take  from  the  circula- 
tion such  chemical  pabulum  as  may  be  concerned  in  the  forma- 
tion of  the  embryo.  For  instance,  the  lime  salts  in  the  cloaca  of 
the  hen  are  there  ready  when  the  time  arrives  for  the  membrane 
to  attach  itself  thereto,  and  so  may  every  other  specialized  process 
be  similarly  carried  on  by  ovaries,  etc.,  and  the  organs  may  be 
divided  into  chemical  and  mechanical,  the  latter  for  conveying 
purposes.  Embryological  and  phylogenetic  development  copy  one 
another.  In  the  latter  substances  in  the  environment  are  utilized 
for  which  the  animal  has  affinities,  and  the  tissues  embryologically 
seek  out  these  same  substances  in  the  circulation.  If  the  affinity 
persists  by  heredity  it  would  be  natural  for  certain  salts  and  other 
themical  pabulum  to  be  attracted  to  the  embryo  just  as  is  the  case 
phylogenetically.  Butchli  and  Pfeffer's  researches  concerning 
moss  and  fern  spermatozoid  affinity  for  malic  acid,  etc.,  are  im- 
portant as  showing  the  the  chemical  nature  of  the  genetic  origin. 

The  reason  why  the  separation  of  sexes  occurs  is  that  cells 
that  tend  to  undergo  higher  differentiation  have  the  greater  at- 
traction for  the  sexual  cells  than  when  undifferentiated.  The 
higher  -developed  sexual  cell  has  a  greater  attractive  influence 
than  appears  in  the  relatively  low  organism  and  hence  sexual 
selection  and  heredity  begin  down  close  to  atomic  combinations, 
if  they  are  not  also  the  direct  cause  of  selection  and  heredity. 

Dr.  Van  de  Corput  ^^  notes  the  diminution  of  virile  power 
through  antiseptics  as  salicylic  acid,  quinine,  menthol,  carbolic 
acid,  seeming  to  act  on  the  blood  elements  and  sexual  cells  as  on 
inferior  organisms.    Spermatozoids  become  in  effect  completely 

"Revue  de  Therapeiitiqne.  Brussels,  1901. 


3l8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

immobile,  under  the  microscope,  like  all  the  leucocytes,  which 
lose  their  amoeboid  movement  and  can  no  longer  migrate.  Sali- 
cylic acid  acts  in  the  same  manner  upon  the  ovary  and  causes  the 
lengthening  of  the  intermenstrual  period. 

The  fusion  or  splitting  of  one  animal  into  two  is  practically  all 
there  is  in  reproduction  and  an  extension  of  life  of  the  original 
individuals  into  duplicates  or  improved  forms  constitutes  a  sort 
of  prolonged  life,  a  relative  immortality,  the  senile  part,  the  ances- 
tor, dying. 

This  continuity  of  the  organic  life  of  the  parent  with  that  of 
the  germ  and  the  sperm  cell  offspring  is  discussed  by  many  biol- 
ogists. Thompson's  ''Animal  Life"  gives  a  summary  of  the  va- 
rious theories  such  as  pangenesis  and  mentions  the  theory  which 
regards  the  cells  of  reproduction  as  continuous  with  and  as  old  as 
the  parent.  But  the  germ  is  in  organic  evolution  something  more 
than  the  ancestral  germ,  because  there  have  been  changes  of  envi- 
ronment and  growth  that  have  added  to  the  structure  and  possi- 
bilities in  the  evolutionary  scale  from  the  very  beginning  in  inver- 
tebrate forms  and  upward  from  and  through  the  lemur  or  half- 
ape  stage  to  man.  Instead  of  pangenesis  we  would  have  ovular 
potencies  latent,  developing  in  the  suitable  environment,  that 
which  afforded  the  necessary  chemical  substances  for  growth. 
The  yelk  stands  for  the  placenta,  for  all  that  either  can  do  is  to 
afford  nutriment  so  arranged  chemically  as  to  build  up  tis- 
sues for  the  foetus.  The  cells  develop  and  change  at  the  proper 
time  and  thus  the  entire  infant  is  formed  on  principles  which 
build  up  symmetrical  crystaline  molecules.  So  the  ovary  and 
ovum  merely  localize  the  reproductive  function  which  inheres  in 
every  cell  of  the  body,  from  the  highest  to  the  very  lowest  or- 
ganisms. Pangenesis  is  further  not  necessary  for  if  the  ovaries 
are  high  elaborations  of  cells  which  can  readily  draw  the  con- 
stituents for  further  development  directly  from  the  blood,  or  other 
fluids,  as  the  seed  draws  from  the  soil,  and  we  observe  the  nutri- 
tion needed  for  budding  or  fission  in  low  animal  life  to  be  directly 
abstracted  from  the  nutriment  fluids  of  the  animal  without  the 
intervention  of  the  ovary,  which  is  evolved  to  afford  this  abstrac- 
tion and  growth  to  a  better  degree.  Specialization  abbreviates  all 
the  other  functions  but  the  reproductive  in  genetic  cells,  the  ten- 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  319 

dency  being  for  many  cells  to  develop  in  certain  special  directions. 
The  special  function  of  reproduction  being  highly  developed  in 
certain  cells,  though  belonging  to  all  cells  in  less  degree.  It  can 
be  inferred  from  ovular  segmentation  being  similar  to  cell  pro- 
liferation generally,  that  nutritional  processes  for  the  ova  are  de- 
rived from  and  are  essentially  the  same  as  those  of  the  body,  and 
tracing  all  these  methods  of  increase  downward,  the  same  uni- 
versal laws  of  assimilation,  growth  and  splitting  apply. 

Meroblastic  segmentation  is  the  incomplete  method  as  in 
fowls  and  most  fishes.  Holoblastic  is  where  the  segmentation  is 
complete.  And  there  is  a  vast  nutritive  importance  in  the  food 
yelk,  as  a  reservoir  from  which  further  molecular  building  up  oc- 
curs in  regular  order,  as  one  chemical  substance  created  enables 
another  to  be  taken  up,  the  yelk  affording  the  materials  to  the 
embryo,  as  the  soil,  water  and  air  does  to  the  seed  of  the  plant. 

Interbreeding  fails  to  present  the  molecular  differences  which 
the  evolving  types  need  for  their  advancement,  and  it  may  be  set 
down  as  a  rule  that  if  interbreeding  does  not  cause  deterioration 
it  is  because  the  organism  is  low  in  the  scale,  and  is  not  in  the  rap- 
idly advancing  series. 

Darwin  shows  that  plants  produced  from  the  pollen  of  one 
flower  applied  to  the  pistil  of  another  are  stronger  and  more  vig- 
orus  than  plants  produced  from  stamens  and  ovules  of  a  single 
blossom.  This  cross  fertilization  is  what  by  natural  and  sexual 
selection  eventuated  sexual  genesis  from  hermaphrodism.  Two 
plants  self  fertilized  would  occupy  an  inferior  place  botanically 
to  plants  cross  fertilized  even  though  capable  of  self  fertilization, 
until  finally  habit  and  development  would  determine  the  fertilizer 
and  fertilized  plants  apart,  and  start  plants  with  single  sexes. 
The  ovules  of  one  and  pistils  of  the  other  plants,  the  ovaries  of 
the  one  and  testes  of  the  other  animal  becoming  atrophied  and  de- 
termining the  sexes  of  living  organisms. 

Corn  when  self  fertilized  is  not  as  good  as  when  <:ross  fertil- 
ized. Self  fecundating  animals  may  accidentally  become  cross 
fecundating  and  thus  improve  upon  the  previous  hermaphroditic 
method,  just  as  plants  may  thus  evolve,  and  an  advantage  is  origi- 
nated and  perpetuated  by  the  labor  division. 


320  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

J.  C.  Arthur^^  affirms  that  ''any  cause  which  retards  develop- 
ment of  an  animal  or  plant  favors  reproduction.  Rather  that 
the  organism  will  develop  the  reproductive  parts  of  its  structure 
faster  and  more  fully  than  the  other  parts,  and  in  the  case  of  crops 
the  yield  of  seed  will  be  greater  proportionately  than  of  the  leaves 
and  stems."  This  can  account  for  the  salacity  of  imbeciles  and 
some  other  insane.  The  intensity  of  animal  passion  that  bursts 
forth  in  some  uncultured  races  and  in  the  weak  minded  menaces 
communities  at  times,  but  the  usual  natural  selection  process  is 
extermination  by  mob  law. 

The  intensity  of  the  eel  ardor  has  made  it  notorious.  They 
exhaust  themselves  in  breeding  and  the  old  eels  die.  Its  ancestry 
without  very  definite  nervous  connections  of  their  cells  could  not 
have  the  reproductive  desires  of  its  various  elements  so  well  as- 
sociated. The  eel  being  an  early  vertebrate  with  its  somites  or 
segments  related  by  a  nervous  system,  general  co-ordinated  activ- 
ity and  a  keener  response  would  follow  as  compared  with  organ- 
isms not  so  well  provided  with  nerves  and  central  co-ordinating 
apparatus.  The  eel  pot  tenacity  of  intertwining  suggests  that  in 
his  adolescing  form,  phylogenetically  speaking,  the  awakened  ar- 
dor of  puberty  in  the  boy  affords  an  ontogenetic  comparison. 
With  him  the  nerve  relations  are  practically  established  for  the 
first  tiine  and  the  "heavens  are  brass"  till  the  desire  is  appeased, 
and  the  young  need  more  scientific  supervision  at  this  time  than 
before,  or  later,  though  they  will  continue  to  be  turned  loose  like 
other  animals,  often  lambs  among  wolves.  Daughters  especially 
need  oversight  and  careful,  proper  instruction. 

A  spinal  injury  or  an  irritation  in  the  upper  part  of  the  spinal 
cord  where  the  erector  centre  is  situated  may  cause  painful  and 
chronic  priapism,  thus  indicating  another  secondary  sexual  acces- 
sory for  correlating  purposes. 

In  the  building  up  of  nervous  tracts  those  concerned  in  food 
procuring  are  the  most  prominent  and  next  follow  those  relating 
to  sexual  functions,  and  to  a  great  extent  the  rest  of  the  nervous 
system  is  merely  superimposed  and  associated  with  these.  One 
feeling  excluding  all  others,  for  the  time  being,  as  fear,  hunger, 

*^  Deviation  in  Development  Due  to  Unripe  Seeds,  American  Natural- 
ist, Oct.  1895,  p.  904. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  32I 

sexual  desire,  indicates  how  the  entire  brain  may  be  tributary  to 
each  division,  so  from  this  could  be  argued  the  absence  of  special 
centres  in  the  brain  for  such  feelings,  and  just  as  the  same  mus- 
cles may  contribute  to  varied  needs  and  wants,  so  the  same  nerv- 
ous distribution  may  answer  to  first  one,  and  then  another  instiga- 
tion or  desire  conveying  to  consciousness  the  sensations  from  the 
viscera  that  are  known  as  emotions  and  other  feelings  that  are 
not  usually  classified  as  emotions. 

Plants  and  animals,  however  varied  and  seemingly  developed, 
are  made  up  of  the  cells  that  are  common  to  all  living  things,  just 
as  hovels  or  palaces  may  alike  be  built  of  bricks,  and  similarly  the 
cellular  functions  remain  the  same  in  highest  and  lowest,  as  the 
rich  are  made  like  the  poor.  Let  the  basic  organs  be  defective  and 
a  post  marital  discovery  thereof  be  made,  the  divorce  proceedings 
reveal  upon  what  domestic  happiness  is  built. 

The  United  States  Fish  Commission  reports  tabulate  some 
facts  as  to  marine  animals  that  enable  deductions  as  to  evolution- 
ary development :  The  right  whale  gestation  period  is  one  year. 
Most  seals  are  polygamous  and  fight  for  harems.  The  unsuccess- 
ful seals  are  bachelors.  Cod  ova  must  come  in  contact  with  the 
milt  very  soon  or  they  will  not  develop.  Surf  fishes  are  vivipar- 
ous. Pike  rub  one  another  violently  and  deposit  their  spawn  with 
violent  blows  of  their  tails.  White  fish  have  strong  sexual  ardor, 
chasing  each  other  and  emit  spawn  when  vents  are  approximated. 
They  are  probably  monogamous.  Carp  are  probably  polyandrous 
as  three  males  will  follow  the  female  when  she  is  spawning.  Pos- 
sibly when  eggs  are  more  numerous  among  white  carp  more  than 
one  milter  is  required  to  impregnate  the  ova.  Salmon  leave  the 
sea  and  spawn  in  fresh  water  often  dying  there,  while  eels  seek 
the  sea  to  spawn.  Oysters  emit  both  ova  and  spermatozoa  which 
apparently  meet  as  plant  elements  do  so  that  sexual  desire  in  such 
degenerate  forms  would  be  allied  to  the  excretory  more  than  to  any 
higher  or  complicated  feelings.  Sturgeons  lay  enormous  numbers 
of  minute  eggs,  one  female  numbering  three  million  during  a 
season.  The  lobster  places  his  double  member  into  the  outer  gen- 
ital opening,  and  the  eggs  are  impregnated  while  yet  in  the  ovary, 
and  are  emitted  immediately  after.  Among  all  animals  the  num- 
ber of  mates  are  determined  by  circumstances  of  strength,  conven- 


322  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ience,  salacity,  and  finally  a  custom  is  soon  established.  Pond 
snails  are  viviparous  and  the  young  are  born  with  shells  and  start 
out  independently  at  once.  Some  gastropods  are  unisexual.  Chi- 
tons are  bisexual,  but  like  the  limpets  are  destitute  of  certain 
functional  organs.  Moss  animals  are  hermaphroditic,  and  the 
male  and  female  elements  mingle  freely  together  in  the  body  fluids, 
and  these  low  forms  of  life  afford  stepping  places  to  the  higher 
single  sexed  animals  by  natural  selection  developing  separate 
sexes  in  their  descendants.  The  fresh  water  mussels  have  the  sexes 
united  in  European  species,  and  distinct  in  the  American  species. 
In  early  life  they  are  parasitic  and  the  eggs  are  hatched  in  the 
gills  of  the  parent  and  develop  into  minute  bivalves  which  attach 
themselves  by  a  byssal  thread  to  any  object  and  later  to  the  gills 
and  to  other  parts  of  fishes,  and  finally  sink  to  assume  the  parent 
form.  The  amphioxus  generally,  but  not  invariably,  lays  eggs  in 
fresh  water  and  they  are  fertilized  as  they  are  extruded  from  the 
female.  Frogs  and  toads  have  lengthened  larval  habits,  the  tad- 
pole has  a  globular  head  and  fish  like  tail.  Adults  are  nocturnal. 
The  spawn  of  the  frog  rises  to  the  surface  in  glairy  masses  and 
is  devoured  in  large  amounts  by  newts  and  fishes.  Salmon  spawn 
is  at  once  fecundated  by  milt  at  intervals,  and  the  fertilization  adds 
greatly  to  the  specific  gravity  of  the  eggs  which  sink  and  are  cov- 
evered  with  gravel  by  the  tail  of  the  female.  In  120  to  140  days, 
according  to  the  temperature,  the  eggs  hatch.  The  adult  males  are 
great  cannibals  and  feed  upon  their  own  offspring.  The  males  also 
fight  fiercely  with  each  other  when  attending  the  females.  Wras- 
ses produce  living  young  contained  in  the  sheath  of  ovaries 
instead  of  the  oviduct.  Ctenophora  are  hermaphroditic 
and  Hydras  reproduce  if  cut  in  pieces,  the  lost  parts  of  each 
piece  are  regenerated.  Besides  developing  sexually  there 
is  among  sponges  a  'Vegetation  propagation."  Sponge  sper- 
matozoa have  conical  heads  and  long  vibratile  tails  formed 
from  the  male  cells  by  division  of  the  nucleus.  The  ova 
are  large  rounded  cells  which  after  fertilization  undergo 
segmentation.  The  embryos  are  minute  oval  bodies  about  the  size 
of  a  pin's  head.  After  a  couple  of  days'  independent  existence 
they  are  thrown  out  of  the  craters  or  oscules  and  they  become 
fixed.     Polar  bears  bring  forth  their  young  beneath  the  snow. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  323 

Nineteen  months  is  the  average  period  of  gestation  in  elephants 
and  from  i8  to  23  months  in  some.  One  offspring  is  born  at  a 
time.  Some  reptiles  are  oviparous  and  others  viviparous  while 
some  are  both. 

There  may  be  degeneracy  of  one  or  the  other  sex  among  low 
forms  of  life  to  a  state  of  mere  parasitism  in  which  the  degenerate 
animal  apparently  performs  no  other  than  a  sexual  function,  as  in 
Rotifera.^^  Protozoa  are  sexless  and  among  the  coelenterata  the 
Hydromedusae  sexes  are  distinct  usually,  and  are  traced  back  to 
asexual  ancestors  from  which  the  gonophores  arise,  with  occa- 
sional exceptions.  The  Medusae  are  higher  unisexual.  Chrysaora 
are  hermaphroditic.  Vermes  are  greatly  varied  sexually.  Oviducts 
oi  Gephyrean  Bonellia  contain  microscopic  degenerate  males.  So 
that  the  male  has  shrunken  up  and  reverted  to  the  original  sper- 
matozoon state.  The  simplest  origin  of  sponge  element  cells,  here 
and  there  from  ova  and  spermatozoa,  may  throw  light  on  their 
chemical  origin,  these  cells  being  situated  where  special  organs  and 
inorganic  compounds  develop  them.*^  The  pedalian  rotifer  male  is 
a  veritable  dwarf,  compared  to  the  female.  Some  male  spiders  are 
smaller  than  the  female  who  may  devour  her  mate  after  the  mari- 
tal repast,  thus  confusing  the  desires  of  hunger  and  love. 

M.  R.  Quinton*^  thinks  that  the  different  modes  of  reproduc- 
tion, oviparous,  marsupial  and  viviparous,  are  the  consequences  of 
the  cooling  of  the  globe.  Life  appeared  at  the  high  temperature 
with  so-called  ''cold  blooded"  animals  that  have  undergone  adap- 
tation, that  now,  as  then,  determines  an  equality  between  their  in- 
ternal temperatures  and  that  of  the  medium  in  which  they  live. 
Incubation  and  viviparous  gestation  come  from  using  the  animal's 
own  heat,  and  hence  mammals  and  birds  follow  the  reptile  ages. 
Many  fishes  do  not  copulate.  The  amphioxus  possesses  the  ear- 
liest trace  of  a  penis.*^  Leeuwenkoek  regarded  the  spermatozoon 
as  a  parasite  when  he  first  observed  it,  and  the  spermatazoid  of 
von  Siebold,  and  the  fila  spermatica  of  Kolliker  are  the  same  or- 
ganism under  different  names.    It  absorbs  nutriment  from  envir- 

^  Encyc.  Britt.,  Vol.  XXI,  p.  720,  Article  Sex. 
*"  Op.  Cit.,  Vol.  XX,  p.  407,  Article  Reproduction. 
"Quoted  by   Coues,    1897. 
"  Encyc.  Britt.,  Vol.  XX,  p.  410. 


324  THE    EVOLVTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

oning  tissues  and  its  chemical  analysis  is  given.*^  Though  they 
are  cold  blooded,  frogs  and  toads  have  strong  passions,  sometimes 
a  female  toad  is  smothered  by  being  hugged  to  death  by  three  or 
four  males. 

Were  the  seminal  material  made  from  elements  concerned  in 
physiological  energy^  so-called  vitality,  it  would  appear  that  when 
their  further  manufacture  were  ended  there  would  be  increased 
activity  in  the  animal  as  the  supply  would  be  furnished  other  parts, 
of  the  body,  the  gelding  would  be  mOre  active  than  the  stallion 
but  aside  from  the  irritation  and  spur  to  activity  the  seminal  func- 
tion affords,  the  lessening  of  the  reproductive  function  not  only  in 
the  main  organs  but  throughout  the  cells  of  the  body  would  ab- 
stract just  so  much  energy  and  in  many  cases  tends  to  plethora  and 
increased  general  growth  with  laziness.    Some  dogs  and  cats  and 
occasionally  boys  who  have  been  altered  grow  large  and  lethargic. 
Among  orientals  there  are  three  kinds  of  eunuchs,  one  kind  have 
the  virile  member  cut  off,  in  another  only  the  scrotum  is  taken 
away,  and  the  complete  sort  have  the  scrotum  and  all  cut  off.    In 
both  the  first  'and  third  a  small  silver  tube  is  used  for  micturition. 
It  is  claimed  that  where  the  scrotum  alone,  with  its  contents,  is 
destroyed  the  erections  continue,  but  without  orgasm  and  in  any 
case  where  ablation  of  testes  is  made  after  puberty  the  sexual  de- 
sire remains  though  ungratified.    Once  experienced  the  nervous 
adjustment  and  organic  memory  is  aroused  in  the  spinal  cord  and 
brain,  and  is  never  forgotten.    It  is  quite  probable  that  castration 
of  the  young  before  the  passion  is  aroused  can  be  followed  by  dor- 
mancy of  desire  and  its  extinction.     One  testicle  cut  off  has  in- 
creased the  erethism,  and  it  often  occurs  that  after  ovariotomy 
women  suffer  from  nymphomania  where  previously  they  had  been 
as  continent  as  any  lady  could  be.   The  complementary  nature  of 
growth  and  reproduction  is  seen  in  the  large  size  attained  by  the 
altered  dog  and  similar  instances  in  other  animals.    Growth  pre- 
cedes reproduction  in  the  lowest  to  the  highest  organisms  and 
when  the  latter  function  is  suppressed  the  growth  may  become  ex- 
cessive but  the  mere  excitement  following  the  inflammatory  pro- 
cesses after  amputations  from  the  stump  of  nerves  and  vessels  con- 

«Ibid,  p.  411. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  325 

veying  sensations  to  nerve  centres  is  not  to  be  confused  with  the 
normal  conditions.  But  that  the  secondary  accessory  organs  may 
act  to  some  degree  independently  is  seen  in  prostatic  fluid  or  vagi- 
nal mucus  ejaculations  sans  testes  et  ovaries.  At  a  certain  period 
of  development  when  molecules  are  adjusted,  "ripe,"  for  further 
assimilation,  puberty,  a  certain  food  present,  other  molecules  to 
construct  ovaries  and  testes  and  their  contents  are  arranged  or 
built  up.  Previous  to  this  the  capacity  for  uniting  had  not  been 
reached.  A  +  B  -|-  C  +  D  and  so  on  must  proceed  onward  to  the 
X  stage  before  Y  and  Z  can  be  taken  up.  So  whether  the  male 
element  rests  in  the  unisexual  or  bisexual  individual  the  higher 
food  is  assimilable  only  after  certain  development  is  reached,  just 
as  infantile  glands  must  appear  before  solid  food  is  acceptable. 

That  inbreeding  causes  degeneracy  and  mixed  stock  thrives 
best,  within  limits,  and  that  also,  within  limits,  like  attracts  un- 
like, have  been  repeatedly  observed.  An  explanation  may  lie  fun- 
damentally in  the  radical  and  base  compounds  forming  the  strong- 
est aflinities,  as  alkalines  and  acids,  and  molecular  compounds  of 
the  same  kind  are  less  attracted  than  where,  within  a  certain  range, 
differences  exist.  Chemical  differences  of  species  are  most  likely 
to  accrue,  through  difference  of  environment,  and,  unless  these 
changes  are  too  radical,  a  better  and  more  stable  chemical  physio- 
logical structure  would  arise  by  such  union,  as  where  ions  are  far- 
thest apart  positively  and  negatively,  but  sexual  selection  will  de- 
cide the  limits  and  modifications  of  this  electro-chemical  analogy. 

Going  upon  the  supposition  that  the  spermatozoidS  of  crypto- 
gamic  plants  must  be  attracted  to  the  female  cells  by  means  of 
some  emanations  from  the  latter  acting  as  appropriate  stimuli  to 
the  former.  Prof.  Pfeffer  of  Tubingen  tried  at  random  a  large 
number  of  chemical  solutions,  in  order  to  find  if  any  of  them 
would  succeed  in  attracting  the  spermatozoids.  Eventually  he 
found  that  spermatozoids  of  certain  ferns  are  infallibly  attracted 
by  a  solution  of  malic  acid,  so  that  if  a  pipette  be  filled  with  this 
solution  and  dipped  into  a  watch  glass  of  fluids  containing  the 
spermatozoids,  the  latter  will  crowd  from  all  parts  of  the  fluid 
into  the  pipette.  Now,  as  malic  acid  occurs  in  the  ferns,  it  is  easy 
to  see  how  natural  selection  may  have  utilized  this  substance  for 
the  purpose  of  guiding  spermatozoids  to  female  cells :  survival  of 


326  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  fittest  can  very  well  have  acted  on  the  spermatozoids  through 
the  countless  generations — always  favoring  those  to  which  malic 
acid  acted  in  any  degree  as  a  stimulus,  until  malic  acid  now  consti- 
tutes an  unfailing  attraction.  Yet,  if  so,  there  need  never  have 
been  any  "psychic  life"  in  the  matter;  the  spermatozoids  are  to 
their  physiological  correlatives  in  a  manner  as  purely  "mechan- 
ical" as  particles  of  water  are  elsewhere. 

Pfeffer  also  found  that  cane  sugar  and  malic  acid  acted  differ- 
ently on  the  spermatozoids  of  ferns  and  mosses.  Confervse  sper- 
matozoids are  attracted  only  by  cane  sugar.  Similar  substances 
such  as  glucose  or  milk  sugar  have  no  influence.**  Binet*^  notes 
that  the  spermatozoid  and  the  ovule  repeat  on  a  small  scale  what 
the  two  individuals  do  on  a  large  scale.  The  spermatozoid  goes 
in  quest  of  the  female  element.  It  owns  organs  of  locomotion  the 
ovule  does  not  have.  Often  the  organ  is  a  long  tail  which  is  whip- 
ped in  a  conical  direction  and  moves  the  spermatozoid  forward. 
The  same  occurs  in  Algae  and  mastigophores  which  are  armed 
with  flagella,  an  undulatory  membrane  like  a  fin  moves  the  sperm 
cell  of  the  Triton  and  Axolotl.  The  spermatic  element  is  animated 
by  the  same  sexual  instinct  of  the  parent  organisms.  In  the  hen 
the  oviduct  may  be  60  centimeters  long  and  in  large  mammals  half 
as  long,  and  the  frail  and  minute  sperm  cells  are  carried  along 
these  tracks  irresistibly.  Henle  has  seen  them  carry  along  with 
them  masses  of  crystals  ten  times  larger  than  themselves  without 
lessening  their  speed.  Ponchet  and  Balbiani  have  seen  them  carry 
eight  to  ten  blood  globules,  a  volume  double  that  of  the  head  of 
the  spermatozoid,  four  or  five  times  heavier  than  itself.  In  the  case 
of  a  star-fish  one  spermatozoid  outstrips  others  in  the  race  and  ar- 
rives near  the  vitellus  or  protoplasm  of  the  ovule,  the  outside  of 
which  is  seen  to  lift  up  in  the  shape  of  a  little  projection  or  cone, 
which  glues  to  the  head  of  the  spermatozoid  and  draws  it  into  the 
interior,  leaving  the  tail  outside,  and  the  ovule  rejects  all  other 

**  Pfeffer,  Untersuchiingen  aus  dem  botanischen  Institut  zu  Tubingen, 
Vol.  I,  Leipzig,  1884,  p.  363;  commented  upon  by  Ribot,  Psycho- 
logic Allemande,  p.  161,  and  Binet,  Psychic  Life  of  Micro- 
organisms, Open  Court  translation,  1889,  p.  86. 

"  Binet,  Op.  Cit.,  p.  '77. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  327 

male  elements  by  forming  a  hard  envelope.  So  the  law  of  sexual 
selection  applies  to  the  minutest  sexual  elements. 

Balbiani  and  Gruber"**^  say  of  micro-organisms  it  is  as  true  as  of 
all  other  animals  the  act  of  coition  is  preceded  by  activity  for  a 
long  time.  Among  the  ciliated  Infusoria,  as  well  as  other  micro- 
scopic life,  ''the  female  when  pursued  by  the  male  seems  under 
two  conflicting  desires,  that  of  yielding  to  and  of  repelling  his 
approaches."  This  show  of  unwillingness  which  is  but  temporary 
and  more  seeming  than  real,  excites  the  male  to  captivate  the 
female.  Espinas  claims  there  are  five  classes  of  phenomena  pre- 
paratory to  sexual  union ;  firstly,  provocation  contact,  the  lowest 
of  all  these ;  secondly,  odor ;  thirdly,  color  and  form ;  fourthly, 
noise  and  sound ;  fifthly,  play  or  every  variety  of  movement.  And 
human  love  demonstrations  could  be  also  included  in  such  catego- 
ries. During  the  conjugation  the  two  ciliated  Infusoria  are  always 
joined  together  at  the  mouth  aperture  for  from  twenty-four  to 
thirty-six  hours  in  Paramoecium  aurelia,  and  five  or  six  days  in 
Paramoecium  bursaria,  then  little  by  little  they  shift  until  they 
meet  length  to  length  but  still  bucally  joined.  The  changes  ef- 
fected appear  to  be  confined  to  the  nucleus  and  nucleolus.  The 
physiological  condition  of  the  nucleus  excites  the  Infusoria  to 
copulate.   Parasites  in  the  nuclei  destroy  the  sexual  function. 

The  attractive  principle  in  the  human  instance  will  be  isolated 
by  future  chemical  research  along  Pfeffer's  lines.  There  is  acetic 
acid  in  the  vagina  but  whether  this  has  any  combining  influence 
upon  the  alkaline  spermatic  fluid  has  not  been  ascertained,  at 
times  there  are  cravings  for  vinegar  pickles,  but  its  significance  is 
usually  blended  with  the  pica  of  hysteria,  as  the  love  of  chalk,  etc. 

In  an  account  of  the  manufacture  of  nitro-glycerine"*^  in  Scot- 
land, the  beauty  of  the  girls  in  the  factories  is  ascribed  to  the  clear- 
ness of  skin  caused  by  breathing  the  fumes  of  the  compounds,  and 
you  also  learn  that  the  girls  marry  quickly  after  entering  the  fac- 
tory. The  workers  are  more  than  usually  romantic  in  their  ten- 
dencies ''and  enquiring  Pickwicks  have  taken  may  notes  thereupon 
in  which  the  statistics  of  marriage  and  population  are  not  entirely 
neglected." 

*"  Archives  de  Zoologie  Experimentale,  1873,  Vol.  II. 
^'  McClnre's  Magazine,  Aug.  1897,  H.  W.  Dam. 


328  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Nitro-glycerine  acts  as  a  heart  stimulant  and  also  as  an  aphro- 
disiac. It  is  probable  that  most  organic  compounds  of  the  recent 
therapeutic  restorative  kind  have  these  properties  of  nitro-glvcer- 
ine,  and  further  corroborate  theories  of  vital  chemistry. 

Densities  of  sperm  differ,  the  frog's  fecundated  eggs  rise  to  the 
surface  of  the  water,  while  those  of  the  salmon  sink  to  the  bottom 
of  the  stream,  and  the  male  elements  differ  in  density  otherwise. 
Both  testes  and  ovaries  may  remain  in  the  abdomen  of  birds  and 
reptiles,  but  in  mammals  the  scrotum  is  pendulous  and  holds  the 
testes  which  gradually  descend  into  it  in  the  course  of  develop- 
ment, except  in  the  instance  of  defective  descent,  as  cryptorchid- 
ism or  hermaphordism.  The  yelk  of  the  Qgg  is  stored  up  mate- 
rial upon  which  the  chick  may  build  up  further,  and  the  ovary 
merely  abstracts  from  the  blood  at  the  proper  instant  and  sequence 
the  necessary  chemical  substances  needed  to  lift  the  embryo 
higher  in  the  evolutionary  scale.  Fishes  that  descend  to  the  sea  to 
spawn  are  rare.  The  eels  do  so,  showing  marine  origin.  Alost 
fishes  either  slowly  or  rapidly  ascend  rivers  from  the  sea  to  lay 
eggs,  while  others  cannot  leave  the  sea  or  the  fresh  water  in  which 
they  live. 

In  many  animals  and  some  low  savages  the  basic  desire  does 
not  appear  to  have  associated  sentiments  which  among  civilized  is 
called  love,  which  varies  with  individuals  and  often  consists  of 
higher  affection  as  sympathy  of  various  sorts,  admiration,  the 
play  instinct,  vanity,  the  feeling  of  ownership,  the  gregarious  in- 
stinct and  later  combined  with  joint  ownership  of  children  in  the 
parental  feelings,  etc.  The  Sandwich  islanders  did  not  know  what 
was  meant  by  virtue  and  regard  it  as  meanness.  ^lorality  was  un- 
known to  them  and  promiscuity  is  in  their  case  seen  to  be  common 
to  this  type  of  savage  though  other  South  Sea  islanders  have  de- 
veloped beyond  this  low  animal  stage,  but  it  is  not  necessary  to  go 
back  to  animals  to  trace  the  rudiments  of  marital  union.  All  sorts 
of  matings  may  be  seen  among  peoples  ordinarily  regarded  as 
monogamous.  There  may  be  polyandry,  polygamy  and  promis- 
cuity, and  rapid  divorces  sometimes  disguise  conditions  from  those 
unaccustomed  to  think  except  superficially.  The  occasional  com- 
plete separation  of  all  sentiment  from  the  mere  sexual  act  is  plainly 
evident  in  the  case  of  a  female  detective  luring  a  person  to  arrest 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  329 

or  an  entrapment  for  blackmailing  purposes.  The  desire  for  gain 
may  predominate  in  the  marriage  of  convenience.  Outrages  are 
reversions  to  the  earliest  methods  among  aborigines  and  fear  was 
the  principal  emotion  on  the  part  of  the  passive  subject. 

Examine  an  ascending  scale  of  animals  and  the  reproductive 
organs  will  be  seen  to  have  developed  from  the  intestinal  tract. 
The  bird  still  uses  the  common  cloaca  for  its  egg  exit  and  the 
Fallopian  tubes  or  oviducts  enlarge  at  their  lower  ends  and  finally 
join  to  form  the  uterus,  as  the  aorta  is  from  fixed  arteries  that  are 
separate  in  the  unborn  and  in  our  progenitors,  and  as  the  bladder 
is  also  built  up  from  enlarged  and  fused  ureters.  The  partly  dou- 
ble uterus  of  the  cat  family  shows  incomplete  development  in  this 
direction,  the  bicorned  uterus  of  the  felidse. 

Even  in  human  beings  the  sympathetic  nerves  control  indiffer- 
ently the  colon  and  uterus  so  that  tenesmus  and  uterine  conges- 
tion are  associated  and  a  drug  like  aloes  will  act  to  some  ex- 
tent upon  the  general  pelvic  sympathetic  uterine  as  well  as  colic 
distributions,  indicating  the  primitive  relationship  of  the  reproduc- 
tive and  intestinal  organs.  The  apposition  of  ani  observed  in  birds 
and  reptiles  would  develop  the  accessory  organs,  as  the  sting  of 
some  insects  becomes  the  ovipositor  of  others  and  helps  to  place 
eggs  in  their  resting  places  in  the  tree  or  ground,  and  the  shark 
claspers  later  becoming  a  penis  or  clitoris,  the  latter  being  a  mere 
homologous  rudiment.  The  passive  ovum  attracting  the  more  ac- 
tive semen  could  through  vast  ages  build  up  the  erectile  male  or- 
gan to  carry  the  sperm  nearer  the  tgg. 

We  are  accustomed  to  regard  offspring  as  copies  of  their 
parents  and  this  is  quite  the  customary  result  of  pairing  and  is 
called  homogenesis,  or  the  male  or  female  children  resembling 
the  parents.  But  there  are  other  methods  of  genesis  one  of  which 
is  known  as  heterogenesis  when  the  plant  or  animal  fails  to  re- 
semble its  parents  but  may  resemble  its  grandparents,  and  still  an- 
other form  may  resemble  neither  ancestor.  Gamogenesis  is  the 
name  of  generation  by  sexual  union.  Agamogenesis  is  where  there 
is  no  sexual  union  necessary  to  produce  offspring.  That  is,  the 
child  may  have  but  one  parent.  Homogenesis,  or  like  males  and 
females  producing  similar  males  and  females  as  offspring  is  uni- 
versal  among  vertebrates   and   most   invertebrates.     Viviparous 


330  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

genesis  is  where  the  young  are  born  alive  and  oviparous  where  the 
Ggg  is  first  laid.  Where  propagation  is  by  heterogenesis  there  is 
always  absence  of  sexual  union  with  occasionally  recurring  sex- 
ual genesis,  agamogenesis  interrupted  by  gamogenesis.  Huxley's 
classification  of  development  is  that  it  is  either  continuous  by 
growth  or  metamorphosis,  or  it  is  discontinuous  by  gamogenesis 
or  agamogenesis,  and  this  last  is  divisible  into  metagenesis  or  par- 
thenogenesis. Where  reproduction  is  from  no  special  organ  but 
from  the  body  direct  it  is  metagenesis  and  this  may  be  from  out- 
side or  inside  the  body  and  hence  called  external  and  internal  met- 
agenesis. Von  Siebold  defines  the  parthenogenesis  as  the  power 
possessed  by  certain  females  of  producing  offspring  without  sex- 
ual union  with  a  male.  An  artificial  but  rather  dubious  partheno- 
genesis is  claimed,  that  is  a  chemical  impregnation  that  will  take 
the  place  of  the  male  element.*^  There  are  other  divisions  which 
are  well  demonstrated,  these  are  the  pathological,  occasional,  sea- 
sonal, juvenile  and  total.  In  three  distinct  sets  of  animals,  rotifers^ 
crustaceans  and  insects,  parthenogenesis  is  a  confirmed  habit.  An 
instance  of  the  pathological  is  known  in  surgery  as  the  dermoid 
cyst,  a  tumor  containing  teeth,  hair,  bones,  etc.,  an  imperfect  foetus, 
growing  in  an  unimpregnated  person. 

Parthenogenesis  is  agamogenesis  carried  on  in  a  special  repro- 
ductive organ  or  the  semblance  of  one  by  false  ova.  That  is,  while 
there  are  regular  organs  in  many  animals  and  plants  in  which  the 
reproductive  process,  homogenesis  by  gamogenesis,  can  be  carried 
on,  there  are  degenerate  organisms  with  rudimentary  ovaries  or 
testes  or  their  equivalents  in  whom  development  proceeds  to  a  cer- 
tain stage  for  offspring  without  the  male  parent  contributing  to 
the  generative  material.  Agamogenesis  with  occasional  gamogen- 
esis resulting  in  heterogenesis  with  occasional  homogenesis,  indi- 
cates the  influence  of  a  change  of  environment  upon  a  low  type  of 
life,  so  that  regular  sexual  union  had  developed  with  offspring 
resembling  the  parents,  but  the  ancestral  hermaphroditic  method 
of  generation  would  recur  with  offspring  still  further  reversionary 
or  resulting  a  generatiDn  further  back,  owing  to  the  lifting  influ- 
ence not  being  constant  or  sufficiently  strong   to   overcome   the 

*'Geddes  and   Thompson,  The  Evolution  of  Sex,  Humboldt   Series, 
N.  Y.,  1889. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  33I 

older  methods  of  propagation.  In  generation  by  eggs  laid,  ovip- 
arous, the  fertilized  germ  leaves  the  parent,  undeveloped.  The 
viviparous,  or  born-alive  offspring,  is  better  developed  because  re- 
tained longer  in  the  mother  and  higher  molecular  arrangements 
are  built  up  before  it  leaves  the  parent.  But  the  line  is  not  sharply 
defined,  for  some  animals  may  have  offspring  by  both  methods. 
As  a  rule  also  parental  care  prolonged  within  reasonable  limits 
marks  the  higher  animal.  In  mammals,  the  highest  vertebrates, 
viviparous  homogenesis  is  the  rule.  Birds  are  always  oviparous 
and  reptiles  are  nearly  always  so.  Oviparous  homogenesis  is  the 
rule  in  arachnida  (the  spider  family)  except  in  scorpions,  which 
are  ovo-viviparous,  that  is,  both  methods  are  present ;  also  univer- 
sal in  Crustacea  (like  crabs,  lobsters,  etc.)  except  the  lower  kinds. 
It  is  universal  among  insects  and  molluscs,  except  low  species  of 
shell  fish.  If  we  start  with  males  and  females  in  agamogenetic 
cases  we  encounter  occasional  eggs  or  seeds  that  are  neither  male 
nor  female,  but  that  produce  the  next  generation  by  buds.  The 
relationship  of  growth  to  seed  production  is  observable  when  gar- 
deners suppress  the  seed  to  form  other  parts  of  the  plant  and 
when  the  plant  is  allowed  to  "run  to  seed"  and  becomes  useless 
in  other  respects. 

Sex  is  determined  in  a  child  before  birth  by  the  internal  nature 
of  the  ovum  wherein  the  male  or  female  molecular  construction 
aggregates  according  to  the  kind  of  nutriment  afforded  by  the 
maternal  fluids.  Bees  directly  create  sex  by  nectar  fed  to  a  neuter 
insect  so  that  it  is  a  chemical  matter,  a  difference  of  molecules  akin 
to  the  difference  between  H2  O  and  H^  O2.  The  older  ideas  were 
that  comparative  vigor  had  much  to  do  with  the  sex  determination, 
as  strength  produced  males  and  weakness,  relatively,  females. 
Darwin's  man  was  a  developed  woman,  while  Spencer's  woman 
was  an  arrested  man,  but  neither  view  is  necessary  in  regarding 
them  as  differentiated  forms  of  an  original  type  which,  though 
never  real,  existed  theoretically.  The  reason  why  there  are  usually 
about  the  same  number  of  males  and  females  was  worked  out  by 
Diisang  on  mechanical  principles  which  preserve  the  balance  of 
sexes.  If  a  sex  is  in  the  minority  then  a  majority  of  that  sex  will 
next  be  forthcoming.  If,  for  instance,  a  majority  of  males  there 
is  greater  likelihood  of  the  ova  being  fertilized  early  and  that 


332  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

means  a  preponderance  of  female  offspring,  and  thus  the  balance 
is  restored.  His  assumption  being  that  young,  immature  females 
or  youthful  marriages  produce  female  children,  and  strength  or 
maturity  of  parents,  especially  the  mother,  would  ensure  male  off- 
spring as  a  rule. 

The  influence  of  nutrition  in  generation  is  undeniable.  Schenck 
of  Vienna  advanced  the  idea  that  when  the  mother  was  well  fed 
upon  sugar  the  offspring  would  be  female,  otherwise  a  male,  but 
facts  proved  his  incorrectness.  From  analysis  in  cell  construction 
that  the  sperm  cell  is  more  highly  differentiated  than  the  germ  cell 
the  indication  would  be  that  changes  in  the  environment  were 
availed  of  more  in  the  male  element  building  of  a  more  complex 
organism  than  the  ovum  required,  which  can  be  considered  as  a 
reservoir  of  simple  molecular  construction,  the  sperm  cell  being 
qualitatively  the  germ  cell  quantitatively  developed.  Hence  when 
a  war  has  cut  off  many  males  and  male  children  preponderate 
thereafter  to  establish  an  equality  of  sexes  it  appears  that  changes 
in  the  environment  caused  by  the  war  enabled  a  higher  develop- 
ment of  sperm  cells  determining  the  male  children  preponderance 
of  births.  So  it  would  be  the  change  in  food  and  habits  that  would 
enable  the  sperm  cell  to  develop  beyond  the  ovum,  increasing  the 
likelihood  of  male  offspring.  The  little  there  is  in  Schenk's  idea 
is  that  surfeit  enables  the  ovum  to  develop  quantitatively,  but  the 
higher  or  lower  molecular  construction  of  the  male  element  would 
determine  the  sex,  independently. 

An  old  fashioned  method  of  ascertaining  sex  pre-natally  was 
by  counting  the  foetal  pulsations.  The  more  rapid  female  pulse 
indicates  less  difficult  circulatory  channels,  the  slower  male  pulse 
points  to  increased  numbers  of  avenues  and  more  complexity  of 
the  organs  to  be  nourished. 

There  is  a  wide  range  in  the  variety  of  ways  in  which  procre- 
ative  desire  operates  not  only  in  the  entire  animal  kingdom,  but 
in  a  single  species,  nor  is  the  human  family  exempt  from  this  vari- 
ability. Havelock  Ellis  sums  up'*^  the  current  theories  of  the  im- 
pulse or  instinct.  One  of  these  regards  it  as  an  impulse  of  evacu- 
ation, the  joy  of  relief  of  excretion  is  sometimes  extreme.^^  A  lady 

*®  Alienist  and  Neurologist,  Apr.  1900. 

^^  Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology,  1883. 


HTNGER    AND    LOVE.  33J 

said  her  relief  after  a  long  delayed  bladder  evacuation  was  "like 
heaven."  Ellis  says  that  the  analogy  between  reproductive  de- 
sire and  impulse  to  evacuate  is  striking,  that  the  preliminaries  are 
often  a  part  of  the  enjoyment,"  nor  is  the  glandular  discharge 
necessary  to  the  enjoyment,  and  the  theory  of  evacuation  is  hope- 
lessly inadequate  for  women,  owing  to  the  trifling  amount  of 
mucus  from  the  glands.  Between  the  act  and  evacuation  there 
are  many  differences,  waste  material  is  absent  in  one  and  present 
in  the  other ;  retention  is  a  disadvantage  in  one  and  an  advantage 
in  the  other.  The  maternal  nursing,  however,  affords  gratifica- 
tion and  is  an  excretory  act.  Hegar  and  Eulenburg's  desire  for 
offspring  theory  is  absurd  in  this  connection.  MolP^  holds  to  two 
separate  components  as  uncontrollable  impulses.  The  instinct  of 
detumescence  or  ejaculation,  like  the  impulse  to  empty  the  blad- 
der, the  other  is  the  impulse  to  touch  the  other,  as  a  secondary 
character. 

The  variability  is  partly  due  to  first  impressions  occurring  at 
the  time  of  the  awakening  of  the  instinct.  The  memory  and  ner- 
vous system  become  by  association  of  two  or  more  impressions 
habituated  to  compound  experiences.  The  method  and  surround- 
ings of  a  first  performance  may  within  the  range  of  the  normal  or 
sometimes  outside  of  it  fasten  a  certain  recollection  indelibly  in 
connection  with  future  experiences,  and  this  law  of  associated  ex- 
periences is  all  the  more  potent  when  there  is  an  inherited  diseased 
impressionability,  as  in  perverts  or  other  insane.  Involuntary 
ejaculations  are  based  upon  accumulations  neglected  or  forming 
too  fast  as  in  puberty  or  when  the  vital  fluids  are  superabundant. 
As  age  advances  this  liability  ceases,  as  well  as  the  possibility  of  a 
rnental  impression  sufficing  to  create  the  orgasm.  It  is  during 
the  period  of  greatest  reproductive  activity  that  either  the  normal 
or  abnormal  peculiarities  are  most  frequent  and  imperative,  an 
overflow  of  nerve  force  into  channels  of  first  experience  if  re- 
peated many  times  finally  adopt  such  channels  to  habitual  modes, 
showing  the  need  of  early  antagonizing  of  pervert  tendencies.  A 
youth  nearing  puberty  accidentally  encounters  the  experience 
while  running  or  climbing  and  thereafter  he  is  apt  to  have  repe- 
titions of  this  under  similar  circumstances.    At  the  instant  of  rev- 

^^  Untersuchungen  iiber  die  Libido-Sexualis. 


334  'T^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

elation  in  the  young  the  potential  channels  in  the  peripheral 
nerves,  the  spinal  cord  and  brain  are  profoundly  shocked,  in  a 
never-to-be-forgotten  way,  and  vivid  recollections  of  the  event 
itself  and  the  associated  events  as  well  will  be  recalled  on  very 
slight  provocation  throughout  life.  The  powerful  nature  of  asso- 
ciation in  all  animal  existence  can  thus  account  for  the  mutations 
of  the  methods  of  genesis  and  the  transference  of  methods  of 
manifestation  in  the  evolutionary  scale  from  two  molecules  at- 
tracted chemically  to  fish  sperm  and  ova,  and  the  personal  inter- 
est of  the  fish  being  feebly  or  strongly  aroused  in  the  fusion  of  the 
elements  and  eventually  the  odor  excitement  in  dogs  and  ocular 
attraction  in  bimanous  animals.  Exactly  as  there  are  two  contend- 
ing forces  in  all  nature,  in  inheritance  and  variation,  so  a  fixed 
method  of  conjugation  of  a  genus  or  species  may  be  departed  from 
by  individuals  and  the  new  method  may  extend  to  a  species  and 
become  established  as  normal,  until  it  supplants  what  was  custom- 
ary for  the  primitive  ancestry. 

Perversions  may  originate  in  appeals  to  certain  senses  being 
so  vigorous  as  to  overwhelm  the  ordinary  experiences  of  the  race 
or  species.  Chemically  a  low  animal  or  plant  can  be  conceived  as 
perverted  by  a  molecular  accident  equivalent  to  a  deformity  or 
poisoning  of  its  substance  to  a  degree  that  will  cause  it  to  be  at- 
tracted strangely  and  repelled  from  that  to  which  its  companions 
are  attracted,  and  atomic  inversion  may  be  conceived  in  a  hydro- 
gen atom  preferring  hydrogen  to  oxygen,  sorre  defect  in  the 
atomic  construction  causing  this. 

In  Japan  the  social  evil  is  not  regarded  as  in  Europe,  if  neces- 
sity drives  to  it,  the  proceeds  are  brought  to  the  family  support 
and  the  act  is  considered  praiseworthy.  But  in  our  own  Virginia 
mountains  the  ''crackers"  hold  meetings  occasionally  in  which 
dogs,  horses  and  wives  are  "swapped."  The  expression  ''morgan- 
atic" also  signifies  that  hereditary  rulers  may  be  above  the  law, 
which  is  made  for  the  common  people,  ''left-handed  marriages" 
to  be  set  aside  when  selfish  state  considerations  demand  are  justi- 
fied for  monarchs.  Occasionally  a  royal  lover  will  give  up  every- 
thing for  the  sake  of  affection,  but  more  often  love  is  forsaken  for 
grossly  sordid  reasons  by  those  near  the  throne  or  who  sit  upon  it. 

Rome  and  Greece,  and  later  France  under  Louis  XIV  and  XV, 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  ^  335 

afford  instances  of  the  decadence  of  people  giving  way  to  luxury 
and  sensuality,  and  the  genesic  erethism  of  old,  broken  down  mon- 
archs  present  revolting  lessons  that  should  teach  self-control  and 
contentment  with  humbler  stations  in  life.  The  Pall  Mall  Gazette 
at  one  time  gave  startling  revelations  of  the  excesses  among 
wealthy  roues.  Debauchees  appear  among  the  two  extremes  of 
the  very  rich  and  the  very  poor.  The  abandoned,  wretched  poor 
of  Naples,  uncared  for,  uninstructed,  are  left  to  their  animal  na- 
tures, and  even  the  churches  forsake  them.  Absence  of  desire 
(anaesthesia  sexualis)  may  be  present  throughout  life,  usually  in 
instances  of  sluggish  vitality,  and  it  may  also  occur  after  excesses 
or  through  great  -revulsion  of  feeling  aijd  in  the  course  of  advanc- 
ing age.  An  increase,  however  (hypersesthesia  sexualis)  may 
also  occur  in  consumption  and  in  a  senile  reawakening,  as  in  the 
approach  of  senile  dementia  leading  to  unfortunate  complications, 
as  of  aged  men  mistreating  young  children,  and  in  others  there 
may  be  paederasty  or  even  bestiality. 

Erotism  even  in  the  insane,  may  be  seemingly  independent  of 
the  basic  faculty,  for  an  adored  one  may  be  idolized  without  refer- 
ence to  the  grosser  passion,  and,  indeed,  there  may  be  repugnance 
to  this  while  the  ardor  otherwise  is  unmistakable.  The  exagger- 
ated inclination  is  known  as  satyriasis  in  men  and  nymphomania 
in  women,  and  these  are  commonly  observed  in  mania  as  one  of 
the  consequences  of  the  stimulated  general  functions  of  the  body, 
the  senses,  emotions,  intellect  and  bodily  functions  being  exalted 
in  activity. 

Animals  have  been  known  to  suffer  perversions,  as  among  the 
insects  known  as  the  coleoptera,  which  are  considered  normally 
perverted  or  inverted.  There  is  an  instance  of  a  donkey  becoming 
exclusively  attached  to  a  cow.  The  desires  for  food  and  repro- 
ductive indulgence  are  the  two  main  perversions.  Insane  women 
may  indulge  in  obscene  language  and  accusations  against  others 
to  suggest  their  own  exaggerated  desires,  and  the  dreams,  delu- 
sions and  hallucinations  of  the  insane  are  often  filled  with  ideas  of 
grotesque  natures  called  demonomania  by  the  ancients ;  in  some  of 
these  perturbed  mental  states  the  patients  declared  that  incubi  or 
succubi  according  to  the  sex  of  the  demon,  would    visit    them 


336  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

nightly  with  their  annoying  attentions.  Krafft-Ebing^-  defines 
sexual  perversion  as  a  paraesthesia  sexualis  or  inclination  to  per- 
sons of  the  opposite  sex  with  perverse  activity  of  the  instinct.  And 
precisely  because  this  perverseness  of  activity  is  the  cause  of  the 
discovery  of  the  trouble,  so  perversion  may,  in  my  opinion,  be 
greatly  more  prevalent  in  minor  degrees  than  writers  on  the  sub- 
ject have  been  able  to  determine,  for  the  perverse  activity  may  be 
absent  in  these  minor  cases.  The  exaggerated  influence  that  the 
axillary  effluvia  may  have  in  some  instances  shows  the  reversion- 
ary olfactory  impressionability. 

Sadism  is  the  name  given  to  the  perversion  in  which  there  is 
an  association  of  active  cruelty.  Krafft-Ebing  enumerates  these 
as  pervert  murderers,  mutilators  of  corpses,  those  who  injure 
women  by  stabbing  or  whipping  and  those  who  defile  or  degrade 
them  or  make  other  attacks  upon  wornen  (symbolic  sadism),  as 
where  one  took  pleasure  solely  in  cutting  a  girl's  bang,  or  another 
in  combing  a  woman's  hair;  another  would  shave  a  girl's  face 
with  lather  and  a  razor;  another  took  pleasure  in  seeing  a 
woman's  face  wrapped  up  as  though  for  toothache ;  some  lick 
boots  of  the  women  and  one  kisses  the  great  toe,  while  others  are 
inclined  to  public  osculum  ad  nates.  Another  division  of  sadism 
is  in  the  delight  of  seeing  boys  whipped.  There  is  sadism  with 
animals,  a  gross  instance  being  in  the  Chinese  treatment  of  geese. 
Sadism  in  women  is  not  frequent,  but  when  it  does  exist  it  may 
be  considered  as  a  masculine  primitive  trait  reverted  to,  and  so 
constitutes  not  only  perversion  but  a  primitive  inversion,  if  the 
extreme  cruelty  can  be  regarded  as  somewhat  exclusively  mascu- 
line. Spitzka^^  mentions  the  cannabalistic  or  analogous  pervert- 
ness  confused  with  sexual  desire.  "Several  of  the  Caesars, 
a  family  which  presented  numerous  examples  of  transmitted  men- 
tal disorder,  delighted  in  seeing  maidens  slaughtered  from  sexual 
motives."  He  also  refers  to  instances  cited  by  Lombroso,  and 
the  scene  of  revolting  murders  in  Westphalia  of  young  girls  who 
had  been  violated. 

Spitzka  further  observes :  "It  is  to  be  insisted  here  that  even 
these  terrible  aberrations  may  exist  as  combined  results  of  a 

^"  Psychopathia  Sexualis. 
■'^  Insanity,  p.  42. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  337 

vicious  inclination  and  cynical  brutality  in  persons  not  insane.'* 
The  term  anthropophagy,  as  indicating  a  morbid  perversion  of 
the  appetite,  calling  for  the  satisfaction  of  murderous  .and  canni- 
balistic desires,  should  be  limited  to  those  cases  where  there  are 
signs  of  heredity,  somatic  evidences  of  degeneration,  and  other 
manifestations  of  a  faulty  nervous  system.  In  one  such  case  Es- 
quirol  found  in  the  executed  monster,  Leger,  gross  brain  dis- 
ease of  the  kind  sometimes  discovered  in  the  insane.  Necrophil- 
ism is  a  name  given  to  the  propensity  to  violate  dead  bodies, 
which  rarely  recurs  in  periodical  insanity.  Garnier^*  regards 
emotionalism  as  a  true  stigma  of  degeneracy,  and  holds  that 
cruelty  and  ferocity  may  be  but  a  brutal  yielding  to  voluptuous 
frenzy.  The  sadist  connects  suffering  with  the  sensation  and  can 
only  enjoy  by  being  cruel.  Sadists  are  of  every  grade,  from  those 
who  perform  silly  acts  of  minor  cruelty  to  monstrous  crimes,  like 
those  of  the  Whitechapel  murders,  assassination,  mutilation,  an- 
thropophagy and  necrophilism. 

Masochism  is  the  association  of  passively  endured  cruelty  and 
violence.  The  desire  is  directed  to  subjugation  and  abuse  by  the 
opposite  sex  and,  with  modifications,  occurring  as  a  pathological 
state  in  a  few  men  and  as  a  physiological  normal  state  most  often 
in  women,  though  not  recorded  as  masochism,  points  to  its  deri- 
vation from  far-off  savage  times  when  primitive  brutal  men-apes 
ferociously  attacked  women,  with  defective  differentiation  be- 
tween the  food  and  procreative  appetites,  so  that  these  early  men 
were  naturally  sadists,  and  early  women  were  masochists,  and 
associated  the  pleasure  and  suffering  of  eating  and  being  eaten 
and  of  reproductive  ferocity  and  capture.  This  desire  for  abuse 
and  humiliation  as  a  means  of  sexual  satisfaction  is  observed  in 
the  felidse,  the  lions  are  like  the  cats  in  their  bitings  and  embrace, 
the  female  cat  apparently  suffers  from  the  male  ferocity  but  alter- 
nately fears  and  seeks  the  experience. 

One  masochist  required  defection  in  his  face  at  the  critical 
instant ;  another  suffered  oral  urination ;  one  carried  a  strap  to  be 
flogged  with  and  a  divorce  was  secured  by  a  woman  with  a  family 
of  children  when  she  discovered  her  husband's  morbid  impulse 
caused  him  to  drink  large  quantities  of  excreted  renal  fluids. 

■"*  Alienist  and  Neurologist.  October,   1900. 


338  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Lord  Cornberry,  a  cousin  of  Queen  Anne,  appointed  governor 
of  New  York,  was  a  degraded  hypocrite,  devoid  of  moral  sense, 
who  dressed  himself  as  a  woman  and  paraded  the  streets  with 
libidinous  gestures.  It  is  of  medico-legal  importance  that  while 
perversions  may  be  accompanied  by  bloodthirsty  exhibitions,  in- 
versions are  especially  dangerous  in  this  regard,  the  jealousy  of 
inverted  affection  mounts  to  destruction  of  its  victims  before  it 
can  be  satisfied.  According  to  Bancroft,^'^  homosexual  practices 
occurred  among  American  Indians.  Sodomy  prevailed  among 
the  Aztecs  and  Mayas,  and  inverts  were  occasional  among  the 
Tupi  Brazilian  tribe,  women  dressing  like  men  and  acting  like 
them,  and  sometimes  a  man  would  forsake  the  company  of  his 
own  sex  to  do  women's  work  only.  An  actress  in  the  United 
States  was  noted  for  her  mannish  behavior  and  likings ;  she 
dressed  as  nearly  like  a  man  as  she  could,  in  hat,  vest  and  coat, 
and  her  example  has  been  followed  largely  by  men-women  gen- 
erally. The  basis  of  this  sort  of  inappropriate  dress  is  inversion, 
or  the  partial  inversion  of  hermaphorditism.  Alice  Mitchell  killed 
Freda  in  Memphis,  Tennessee,  by  cutting  her  throat  and  on  the 
witness  stand  Alice  wept  for  her  lost  love.  She  was  sent  to  an 
asylum  as  insane.  Another  instance  similar  to  this  occurred  in 
the  murder  of  a  female  attendant  at  the  Elgin,  Illinois,  asylum 
by  an  invert  woman  who  loved  the  attendant.  A  prominent  Chi- 
cago surgeon  was  an  invert  whose  grosser  exhibitions  were  made 
when  intoxicated.  Some  of  these  inverts  write  ardent  love  letters 
speaking  of  themselves  as  feminine.  The  ancient  Lesbian  love 
was  of  this  nature.  Homosexuality  is  defined  by  Krafft-Ebing  as 
a  great  diminution  or  absence  of  feeling  for  the  opposite,  and  a 
substitution  of  desire  for  the  same  sex,  a  contrary  sexual  instinct. 
He  considers  that  it  may  be  acquired  and  be  a  simple  reversal  of 
desire,  or  a  complete  change  of  character,  and  he  becomes  a 
female  in  feeling,  or  a  woman  may  become  a  male  in  feeling. 
This  inversion  may  also  be  congenital  where  there  is  either  homo- 
sexuality only  or  heterosexuality  with  predominating  homosex- 
uality (a  psychical  hermaphrodism)  ;  another  division  would  be 
effeminacy  (as  among  the  so-called  Miss  Nancys),  and  still  an- 
other sort  have  body  differences  from  those  of  their  own  sex  ap- 

°^  Native  Races  of  the  Pacific  Coast.  VoL  II,  pp.  467,  774. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE. 


339 


proaching  without  being  complete  reversals  of  sexual  features. 
These  homosexual  individuals  were  known  as  urnings  and  the 
man-woman,  woman-man,  anatomically  or  physiologically,  were 
classed  under  androgyny  and  gynandry.  .The  great  danger  in 
these  inversions  is  their  liability  at  any  time  to  become  imperative 
and  murderous.  The  fault  lies  in  an  embryological  error.  Homo- 
sexuality may  commingle  all  the  other  perversions  with  eroto- 
mania.    Apprehension  of  punishment  never  restrains  perverts. 

Fetichism,  in  this  study,  is  a  special  term  to  designate  the  as- 
sociation of  desire  with  certain  portions  of  dress  or  of  the  person. 
Binet  concludes  that  in  the  life  of  every  fetichist  there  may  be 
assumed  to  have  been  some  event  which  determined  the  associa- 
tion with  the  single  impression,  such  as  could  occur  during  early 
youth  and  the  first  awakening  of  the  vita  sexualis.  Among  male 
fetichists  there  are  those  who  adore  a  part  of  the  body,  as  a  hand 
or  foot,  and  inclinations  are  aroused  by  seeing  such  parts,  and 
there  are  hair  fetichists  who  are  aroused  by  seeing  or  feeling  this 
part,  liking  to  comb  it  or  stroke  it,  and  another  sort  are  unduly 
excited  by  articles  of  attire,  especially  underclothing,  or  handker- 
chiefs ;  but  a  common  perversion  of  this  sort  is  among  the  shoe- 
stealers.  These  imperative  impulses  compel  them  to  steal 
women's  shoes,  sometimes  snatching  them  from  their  feet.  This 
paraesthesia  of  the  instinct  depends  upon  some  determinant  to 
arouse  the  complete  feeling.  In  one  case  a  pair  of  red  shoes  had 
to  be  worn  by  the  woman  and  in  another  black  stockings,  as  in 
both  of  these  the  earliest  impressions  were  associated  with  articles 
of  that  sort.  It  is  an  attempt  to  recall  a  strong  impression  aroused 
at  the  time  of  first  excitation  and  is  psychologically  an  association 
memory.  There  may  be  indifference  to  ordinary  means  of  excit- 
ing the  function  and  a  detail  takes  the  place  of  the  whole.  Fetich- 
ism may  substitute  parts  of  the  person,  either  uncovered  or  cov- 
ered. It  is  an  obsession,  and  is  divided  into  corporeal  or  imper- 
sonal, giving  to  parts  or  objects  the  exclusive  power  of  producing 
the  orgasm,  the  fetich  being  directly  or  by  mental  representation 
the  element  at  once  necessary  and  sufficient  for  excitation.  The 
sadi-fetichistic  hair-clipper  experiences  the  orgasm  when  he  acts 
violently,  and  by  consequence  mutilates  the  object  of  his  fetich- 
ism.   One  case  in  Chicago  committed  suicide  and  his  brain  was 


340  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

said  to  have  been  injured  when  he  was  young.  Flaggelants  or 
whippers  may  be  sadi-fetichists.  There  are  those  who  stick  pins 
or  needles  into  the  glutei  and  cut  the  ears  of  victims.  Vampirism 
and  necrophilism  are  the  worst.  Sadi-fetichists  may  be  corporeal 
or  impersonal.  As  in  ordinary  fetichism  the  desire  beholds  an 
object  which  can  alone  awaken  the  orgasm,  but  only  on  the  condi- 
tion that  the  fetich  be  subjected  to  violence  and  be  torn,  broken, 
soiled,  burnt  or  otherwise  destroyed. 

Oralists  are  extremely  common  and  may  be  regarded  as  fetich- 
ists  in  a  certain  sense,  but  all  these  perversions  shade  off  into  each 
other,  as  can  be  imagined  when  the  central  idea  in  all  is  the  one 
event.  The  fetichist  who  finds  gratification  in  gently  combing 
woman's  hair  and  the  other  who  loves  to  cut  girls'  bangs  is  sim- 
ply a  mild  sort  of  sadist,  and  the  worst  sadist  is  a  violent  fetichist. 

Dr.  A.  R.  Reynolds  reported  a  case  of  sexual  perversion  of  a 
peculiar  kind,^*^  in  which  a  man  who  had  married  a  one-legged 
woman  became  after  her  death  perverted  with  regard  to  that  con- 
dition. He  sought  out  one-legged  women  and  spent  considerable 
money  upon  them  in  securing  artificial  limbs  for  them  and  by 
handling  the  stump  of  the  leg  he  derived  his  only  gratification. 
Right  leg  amputations  were  the  ones  he  preferred.  This  could 
be  called  personal  or  corporeal  fetichism  with  a  tinge  of  sadism, 
and  association  at  an  early  period  of  the  vita  sexualis  of  the  act 
with  the  personal  peculiarities  was  the  cause  of  this  perversion. 

Exhibitionists  are  a  strange  group  of  perverts  who  may  or 
may  not  be  insane  in  the  ordinary  use  of  the  term.  Lasegue  found 
that  the  exhibitionists  comprise  dements,  epileptics,  paretic  de- 
ments, idiots,  alcoholics  and  impulsive  or  obsessed  types  as  well. 
Sometimes  the  exhibition  is  unconscious,  but  often  it  is  an  equiva- 
lent to  the  act  or  its  approach  with  all  the  agonizing  struggles 
against  it  of  the  impulsive  obsession.  These  perverts  may  be 
frigid  but  compelled  to  exhibit  themselves  at  intervals  with  parox- 
ysms and  remissions.  They  are  mentally  twisted.  Impulsive  ex- 
hibitionism is  a  pervert  obsession  and  impulse,  characterized  by 
an  irresistible  tendency  to  exhibit,  in  public  generally,  with  a  fixity 
of  hour  and  place ;  there  may  be  flaccidity,  without  appearance  of 

^Meeting  Chicago  Medical  Society,  Nov.  1888,  reported  in  Western 
Medical  Reporter  Supplement 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  34I 

lasciviousness,  the  accomplishment  of  the  exhibition  ending  the 
agonizing  struggle. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  offers  us  solutions  not  only  for  mor- 
phological and  physiological  problems  but  also  explanations  of 
psychological  phenomena. 

It  is  evident  that  if  species  are  mutable,  if  forms  change  one 
into  the  other,  then  the  peculiarities  of  the  more  remote  or  earlier 
forms  may  be  inherited  by  the  latter,  and  that  pathological  mental 
states  are  often  reversions  to  the  characteristics  of  progenitors. 
For  this  reason  we  find  in  the  majority  of  insane,  that  the  emo- 
tions, brutal  ferocity  and  sexual  peculiarities  of  lower  animals 
exhibit  themselves,  because  the  later  acquired  intellectual  traits, 
which  held  grosser  mentality  in  check,  are,  during  the  insanity 
suppressed.  Tracing  all  animal  life  back  to  primitive  forms  such 
as  the  monads  and  amoebae,  modern  biological  science  studies  the 
life  history  of  these  low  organisms  and  reduces  physiological  pro- 
cesses to  their  simplest  expression. 

In  Science  (N.  Y.),  June  i,  1881,  I  published  the  following, 
and  later  included  it  in  my  "Comparative  Physiology  and  Psy- 
chology," published  by  A.  C.  McClurg  &  Co.  The  London  Jour- 
nal of  Mental  Science  mentioned  it  as  a  "well  reasoned  out  the- 
ory," and  commended  it  to  all  students  of  mental  disease. 

A  paper  on  "Researches  into  the  Life  History  of  the  Monads," 
by  W.  H.  Dallinger,  F.R.M.S.,  and  J.  Drysdale,  M.D.,  was  read 
before  the  Royal  Microscopical  Society,  December  3,  1873,  where- 
in fusion  of  the  monad  was  described  as  being  preceded  by  the 
absorption  of  one  form  by  another.  One  monad  would  fix  on 
the  sarcode  of  another  and  the  substance  of  the  lesser  or  under 
one  would  pass  into  that  of  the  upper  one. 

In  about  two  hours  the  merest  trace  of  the  lower  one  was 
left,  and  in  four  hours  fusion  and  multiplication  of  the  larger 
monad  began.  A  full  description  of  this  interesting  phenomenon 
may  be  found  in  the  Monthly  Microscopical  Journal  (London), 
for  October,  1877. 

Prof.  Leidy  has  asserted  that  the  amoeba  is  a  cannibal,  where- 
upon Mr.  Michels,  in  the  American  Journal  of  Microscopy,  July, 
1877,  calls  attention  to  Dallinger  and  Drysdale's  contributions, 
and  draws  therefrom  the  inference  that  each  cannibalistic  act  of 


342  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  amoebse  is  a  reproductive,  or  copulative  one,  if  the  term  is  ad- 
missible. 

The  editor  (Dr.  Henry  Lawson)  of  the  English  Journal^ 
agrees  with  Michels. 

Among  the  numerous  speculations  upon  the  origin  of  the 
sexual  appetite,  such  as  Maudsley's  altruistic  conclusion,  which 
always  seemed  to  me  to  be  far-fetched,  I  have  encountered  none 
that  has  referred  its  derivation  to  hunger. 

At  the  first  glance  such  a  suggestion  seems  ludicrous  enough, 
but  a  little  consideration  will  show  that  in  thus  fusing  two  desires 
we  have  still  to  get  at  the  meaning  and  derivation  of  the  primary 
one — desire  for  food. 

The  cannibalistic  amoeba  may,  as  Dallinger's  monad  certainly 
does,  impregnate  itself  by  eating  one  of  its  own  kind,  and  we 
have  innumerable  instances  among  algae  and  protozoa  of  this  sex- 
ual fusion  appearing  very  much  like  ingestion.  Crabs  have  been 
seen  to  confuse  the  two  desires,  by  actually  eating  portions  of 
each  other  while  copulating,  and  in  a  recent  number  of  the  Scien- 
tific American,  a  Texan  details  the  mantis  religiosa  female  eating 
off  the  head  of  the  male  mantis  during  conjugation. 

Some  of  the  female  arachnida  find  it  necessary  to  finish  a 
marital  repast  by  devouring  the  male,  who  tries  to  scamper  away 
from  his  fate.  The  bitings  and  even  the  embrace  of  the  higher 
animals  appear  to  have  reference  to  the  derivation.  It  is  a  phy- 
siological fact  that  association  often  transfers  an  instinct  in  an 
apparently  outrageous  manner.  With  quadrupeds  it  is  clearly 
olfaction  that  is  most  related  to  sexual  desire  and  its  reflexes,  but 
not  so  in  man.  Ferrier  diligently  searches  the  region  of  the  tem- 
poral lobe  near  its  connection  with  the  olfactory  nerve  for  the 
seat  of  sexuality,  but  with  the  diminished  importance  of  the  smell- 
ing sense  in  man,  the  faculty  of  sight  has  grown,  to  vicariate 
olfaction.  Certainly  the  ''lust  of  the  eye"  is  greater  than  that  of 
the  other  special  sense  organs  among  bimana. 

In  all  animal  life  multiplication  pioceeds  from  growth,  and 
until  a  certain  growth,  puberty,  is  reached,  reproduction  does  not 
occur.  The  complementary  nature  of  growth  and  reproduction 
is  observable  in  the  large  size  attained  by  some  animals  after  cas- 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  343 

tration.     Could  we  stop  the  division  of  an  amoeba  a  comparable 
increase  in  size  would  be  effected. 

The  grotesqueness  of  these  views  is  due  .to  their  novelty,  not 
their  being  unjustifiable. 

While  it  must  thus  seem  apparent  that  a  primeval  origin  for 
both  ingestive  and  sexual  desire  exists,  and  that  each  is  a  true 
hunger,  the  one  being  repressible  and  in  higher  animal  life  being 
subjected  to  more  control  than  the  other,  the  question  then  pre- 
sents itself :  What  is  hunger  ?  It  requires  but  little  reflection  to 
convince  us  of  its  potency  in  determining  the  destiny  of  nations 
and  individuals  and  what  a  stimulus  it  is  in  animated  creation.  It 
seems  likely  that  it  has  its  origin  in  the  atomic  affinities  of  inani- 
mate nature,  a  view  monistic  enough  to  please  Haeckel  and  Tyn- 
dall.  Dr.  Spitzka,  in  commenting  on  the  foregoing  in  the  same 
journal,  June  25,  1881,  sa3^s : 

''There  are  some  observations  made  by  alienists  which  strongly 
tend  to  confirm  Dr.  Clevenger's  theory.  It  is  well  known  that 
under  pathological  circumstances  relations  obliterated  in  a  higher 
development  and  absent  in  health,  return  and  simulate  condi- 
tions formed  in  lower,  and  even  in  primitive  forms. 

An  instance  of  this  is  the  pica  or  morbid  appetite  of  pregnant 
women  and  hysterical  girls  for  chalk,  slate  pencils  and  other  arti- 
cles of  an  earthy  nature.  To  some  extent  this  has  been  claimed 
to  constitute  a  sort  of  reversion  to  the  oviparous  ancestr}',  which, 
like  the  birds  of  our  day,  seek  calcareous  material  required  for  the 
shell  structure  in  their  food.  There  are  forms  of  mental  perver- 
sion properly  classed  under  the  head  of  the  degenerative  mental 
states,  with  which  a  close  relation  between  the  hunger  appetite 
and  sexual  appetite  becomes  manifest. 

"Under  the  heading  'WoUust,  Mordlust,  Anthropophagie,* 
Krafft-Ebing  describes  a  form  of  sexual  perversion  where  the 
sufferer  fails  to  find  gratification  unless  he  or  she  can  bite,  eat, 
murder  or  mutilate  the  mate.  He  refers  to  the  old  Hindoo  myth 
Civa  and  Durga  as  showing  that  such  observation  in  the  sexual 
sphere  were  not  unknown  to  the  ancient  races.  He  gives  an  in- 
stance where,  after  the  act,  the  ravisher  butchered  his  victim  and 
would  have  eaten  a  piece  of  the  viscera ;  another  where  the  crim- 


344  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

inal  drank  the  blood  and  ate  the  heart ;  still  another,  where  certain 
parts  of  the  body  were  cooked  and  eaten.^^ 

The  London  scientific  weekly,  Nature,  in  reprinting  my  arti- 
cle, quotes  Ovid :  "Mulieres  in  coitu  nonnunqiiam  genas  cir- 
vicemquse  maris  mordunt." 

Eighteen  years  later  Roux  adopted  my  hunger  theory  and 
ispoke  of  sexual  hunger  affecting  the  whole  system.^^ 

Bloodthirsty  and  other  abnormal  hunger  developments  could 
be  expected  to  appear  in  defectives  when  the  sexual  feelings  were 
excited.  The  Madchen-Schander  of  Leipzig  and  others  had  ejac- 
ulations upon  wounding  women  with  lancets.  The  original  "blue 
beard,"  Gilles  de  Retz,  in  the  eighteenth  century,  murdered  female 
children  in  a  wholesale  manner  and  in  the  midst  of  blood  result- 
ing from  his  mutilation  he  had  intercourse  with  his  victims.  He 
charged  his  crimes  on  the  perusal  of  Suetonius'  work,  "The 
Twelve  Caesars."  Many  criminal  assaults  of  negroes  in  the  south- 
ern states  of  America  are  of  a  comparable  nature. 

As  for  the  origin  of  these  manifold  perversions  no  single  ex- 
planation such  as  reversion  or  atavism  will  suffice,  in  all  cases,  for 
in  simple  fetichism,  personal  or  impersonal,  the  memory  is  for  all 
subsequent  time  impressed  with  a  group  of  associated  experiences 
at  the  critical  and  exceedingly  impressionable  instant  of  the  tre- 
mendous physiological  excitement  of  a  new  and  unexpected  sen- 
sation. Association  is  much  more  potent  in  memorizing  generally 
than  is  supposed,  and  in  some  the  power  to  disassociate  is  not  so 
well  developed.  Persistence  in  yielding  to  the  repetition  of  the 
original  impression  would  tend  to  fix  and  intensify  it,  while  oppo- 
sition to  it  would  help  to  break  it  up.  This  associative  origi- 
nation is  quite  apparent  in  the  case  cited  by  Reynolds  of  the  in- 
fatuation for  women  with  one  leg,  and  can  be  observed  in  many 
similar  rases.  Many  normal  persons,  however,  value  any  object 
that  recalls  the  loved  person  and  this  may  be  regarded  as  a  healthy 
process  of  association,  the  abnormal  consists  in  concentration  upon 
one  object  or  incident.  If  sodomy  is  reversionary  it  is  to  cloacal 
apposition  of  reptiles,  but  it  may  be  regarded  as  a  substitution 

"Ueber  genisse  Anomalien  des  Geschlechtstriebes  van  Krafft-Ebing, 

Archiv,  fur  Psychiatric,  VII. 
^  Psychologic  de  Tinstinct  sexuel,  1899,  pp.  22,  23- 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  345 

and  not  a  reversion,  for  heterosexuality  is  not  always  interfered 
with  by  (he  depravity,  though  sometimes  this  is  the  case,  espe- 
cially in  inverts.  Inversion  is  plainly  mental  hermaphrodism,  and 
it  is  instructive  that  function  thus  may  defy  the  presence  of  or- 
gans for  a  complementary  function. 

Sadism  is  clearly  atavistic  to  brutally  savage  ancestry,  prob- 
ably ren^oter  than  the  ape-like  man  stage.  The  cat  family  exhibit 
much  of  this  ferocity  and  the  female  cat  is  masochistic.  Then 
sadism  would  pertain  to  reversion  to  brutal  male  states  and  maso- 
chism to  submissive  female  states,  such  as  slaves  even  in  modern 
times  have  been  compelled  to  experience  in  all  its  degrees,  and  if 
there  is  anything  that  would  afford  opportunity  for  the  develop- 
ing of  sadism  it  would  be  when  slavery  was  sanctioned  and  re- 
garded as  divinely  ordained.  One  of  the  most  instructive  condi- 
tions, to  rriy  way  of  thinking,  is  that  of  exhibitionism.  It  appears 
to  me  to  plainly  unravel  what  would  be  a  tangled  snarl  in  finding 
the  thread  of  evolution  of  the  sexual  processes.  The  act  of 
spawning  in  the  presence  of  the  male  fish  and  the  act  of  fecundat- 
ing with  sperm  by  the  male  in  the  presence  of  the  female  fish  are 
almost  identical  processes  to  exhibitionism,  not  analogous  but 
homologous,  and  just  as  the  human  foetus  may  have  gills  and  the 
cardinal  system  of  blood  vessels  of  a  fish,  so  may  the  adult  retain 
fish  exhibitionist  propensities  of  sexual  manifestations  as  a  fail- 
ure of  development,  as  a  teratological  characteristic,  precisely  as 
branchial  fistulse,  or  openings  in  the  neck  of  an  adult,  point  to  the 
failure  of  the  fish  gills  to  be  retrograded  normally,  and  as  ichthy- 
osis, or  the  scaly  epidermis,  occasionally  develops  on  the  back  of 
a  human  being. 

We  are  now  prepared,  I  think,  to  trace  the  development  of  the 
sense  in  both  sexes  from  its  origin  not  only  up  to  and  through 
the  simian  phylum  but  throughout  every  ramification  of  animal 
life.  Starting  from  the  fusion  of  two  cells  which  pass  into  the 
resting  stage  and  then  undergo  segmentation  and  multiplication  of 
the  original  cells  we  have  the  initial  fusion  very  much  like  inges- 
tion. This  could  be  considered  as  the  hunger  stage  of  the  func- 
tion which  later  develops  or  differentiates  into  the  sexual  stage 
by  special  organs  differentiated  from  the  intestinal  tract,  and  the 
hunger  may  reside  in  these  organs  alone  and  not  influence  the 


346  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

owners  of  the  organs  in  some  lines  of  creation.  The  lamprey 
eel  propagates  by  contact,  but  that  is  no  reason  why  the  eel-like 
progenitor  of  both  the  lamprey  and  the  fishes  should  be  regarded 
as  doing  the  same  thing,  we  see  that  the  ova  and  sperm  elements 
unite  without  contact  of  the  fishes  by  a  process  of  exhibitionism, 
so  that  this  is  a  stage  in  the  development  of  man  to  which  some 
imperfect  persons  revert.  Finally  the  fetichistic  association 
occurs  with  the  development  of  the  nervous  system  and  special 
senses  such  as  tactile,  olfactory  and  sight,  until  simultaneous"  ex- 
citation of  these  senses  became  an  accompaniment  of  the  perform- 
ance. '  The  exhibitionist  fish  may  to  some  extent  be  fetichistic 
with  regard  to  the  spawn  ocularly,  and  so  we  have  fetichism  re- 
versionary and  connected  with  exhibitionism  by  easy  stages.  The 
behavior  of  eels  in  conjugation  suggests  sadism  and  female 
spiders  are  undoubtedly  sadists. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  include  sodomy  as  atavistic  or  as  a  step 
in  evolution,  for  with  the  natural  selection  of  an  intromittent 
organ  which  can  bring  the  sperm  elements  closer  to  the  ova  which 
are  less  active  and  the  accessory  apparatus  growing  from  the 
greater  activity  of  the  semen  as  compared  to  the  relatively  qui- 
escent ova,  the  apposition  of  any  and  all  these  special  organs  is 
directly  traceable  to  cloacal  anal  junction.  Sadism  is  allied  to  the 
cannibalistic  behavior  of  many  low  animals,  crocodiles  and  sal- 
mon among  such  as  eat  their  young,  and  sadism  during  or  after 
conjugation  is  doubtless  far  more  common  than  is  recorded. 
Masochism  is  the  complement  and  accompaniment  of  sadism 
when  it  is  voluntary,  and  extends  with  sadism  from  early  brute 
days  to  human  slavery  and  bandit  times,  the  slayer  being  more 
common  than  the  one  who  desires  to  be  mutilated,  and  if  this 
sadism  occurs  in  a  female  and  masochism  in  a  male  then  there  are 
inversions  in  addition  to  the  perversions.  A  faulty  development 
which  transmits  the  instincts  of  one  sex  with  the  organs  of  an- 
other need  not  be  regarded  as  going  back  as  far  as  to  the  ex- 
tremely remote  bisexual  ancestry ;  it  can  be  allied  to  dextrocardia 
as.teratological.  Among  so  many  complete  males  and  females  it 
is  no  wonder  that  here  and  there  androgyny  and  gynandry  occur 
and  sometimes  a  masculine  and  feminine  intellect  is  misplaced. 


HUNGER    AND    LOVE.  347 

A  bookseller  named  Bedborough,  May  31,  1898,  was  brought  before 
Sir  John  Bridge,  at  the  Bow  Street  Police  Court,  for  selling  a  scientific 
work  on  sexual  inversion,'  written  by  a  famous  criminologist,  Havelock 
Ellis.  Notwithstanding  the  clear  evidence  that  the  book  was  not  written 
to  pander  to  prurience  but  to  add  to  our  knowledge  of  an  important  an- 
thropological subject,  Sir  John  immortalized  himself  as  mistaken  and  as 
not  being  influenced  by  honi  soit  qui  mal  y  pense,  and  condemned  the 
book  as  tending  to  corrupt  the  morals  of  her  majesty's  subjects.  The 
foremost  scientists  interested  in  mental  disease  in  America,  England  and 
Europe  uniformly  express  indignation  at  this  cant  and  playing  to  the  gal- 
leries, or  as  Shakespeare  would  put  it,  "splitting  the  ears  of  the  ground- 
lings." With  this  precedent  and  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  German 
works  such  as  Krafft-Ebing's  Psychopathia  Sexualis  and  some  French 
writings  use  much  plainer  language,  I  felt  impelled  to  resort  to  technical 
terms  in  discussing  this  delicate  subject  so  that  the  work  may  not  exceed 
the  limits  of  liberty  to  express  opinion  which  we  regarded  as  better  in 
England  and  America  than  elsewhere.  The  time  may  come  when  any- 
thing ordinarily  spoken  of  as  made  by  God  may  not  be  considered  too 
vile  to  mention.  Prudishness  is  usually  hypocritical  and  intended  to  cover 
a  vulgar  nature.  Nature  cannot  be  understood  if  part  of  it  is  hidden  from 
sight.  I  have  endeavored  to  avoid  unnecessary  plainness  in  dealing  with 
the  important  -subject. 


CHAPTER  X. 

ACQUISITIVENESS. 

"Master,  I  marvel  how  the  fishes  live  in  the  water? 
Why,  as  men  do  a-land :  the  great  ones  eat  up  the  little  ones." 

Pericles,  Act  II.,  Scene  I. 

The  many  ways  in  which  the  desire  to  grab  may  make  itself  ap- 
parent point  to  its  universality  and  show  that  it  is  deeply  rooted 
in  nature.  The  way  of  the  world  is  to  get  things,  whether  by  fair 
means  or  foul,  regardless  of  the  end  or  means  being  good  or  bad. 
Tribes  grab  territory,  kings  grab  thrones,  the  people  either  snatch 
from  one  another  or  adjust  to  a  condition  of  give  and  take,  evolved 
from  the  primitive  grab  method.  Priests  clutch  the  tangible 
money  of  the  multitudes  and  promise  to  pay  in  intangible  immor- 
tality. Inorganic  chemical  substances  are  grabbed  by  the  plant 
to  promote  its  growth  and  the  animal  eats  the  plant  and  in  turn 
is  eaten.  In  short,  the  history  of  the  universe  and  of  all  life  con- 
sists in  endless  differentiations  of  the  game  of  grab.  Atoms  grab 
to  form  molecules,  the  latter  grasp  one  another  and  new  affinities 
begin.  Cells  are  formed  from  molecules  and  these  form  plants 
and  animals.  The  differentiation  is  in  the  relinquishment  of  the 
lower  grabs  for  a  developed  idea  of  what  is  more  desirable,  and 
these  ideas  are  not  the  same  with  all,  for  one  prefers  cash,  another 
science,  another,  like  the  Indian,  cares  for  food,  or  another  may 
be  '"other-worldly"  in  his  desires. 

Every  cell  is  absolutely  selfish  and  never  passes  on  to  another 
cell  what  it  can  take  itself.  As  Schopenhauer  says,  ''And  yet 
when  all  is  told  man  has  been  struggling  for  the  very  same  things 
as  the  brute  has  attained."  You  cannot  repress  the  grab  instinct 
in  human  nature,  nor  can  you  disguise  it  in  tyrants  who  seek  per- 
petual power  to  grab,  and  plan  to  destroy  all  who  oppose  them. 
The  lives  of  plants  and  animals  reveal  that  selfishness  is  a  neces- 
sary law  of  nature,  and  that  there  are  grades  of  selfishness.     It 

348 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  34^ 

seems  a  hard  thing  to  admit,  but  facts  should  be  looked  at 
squarely.    A  pack  of  hungry  wolves  eat  their  own  wounded. 

Animals  are  provided  with  prehensile  organs  developed  up- 
ward from  where  the  entire  substance  envelops  the  food  toward 
such  structures  as  hands,  feet,  ribs,  lungs,  stomach,  etc.,  to  enable 
better  grasp  of  food  or  air  or  to  enable  movement  over  the  earth's 
surface  in  search  of  food. 

The  grasping  desire  is  never  differentiated  out  of  existence  for 
the  reason  that  as  atoms  group  to  form  molecules  their  new  affini- 
ties may  differ  from  the  former  or  older  affinities,  that  is,  the 
atoms  newly  grouped  may  desire  new  things,  and  as  molecules 
pass  upward  in  complexity  of  grouping  from  the  inorganic  to  the 
highest  organic  series,  and  including  all  animals  as  but  complexly 
arranged  molecules,  the  desires  of  these  animals  may  differ  or  im- 
prove as  they  ascend  the  scale  of  development,  but  man  is  never 
satisfied  because  no  molecule  is  satisfied  if  it  is  possible  to  enter 
into  new  combinations  with  other  molecules.  So  insatiability  is 
inborn  and  unavoidable.  Sharks'  eggs  have  grasping  appendages 
like  the  tendrils  of  some  climbing  plants  so  radically  and  early  is 
the  grab  propensity  developed,  and  this  primitive  grabbing  de- 
sire may  survive  and  be  strengthened  with  but  little  change  from 
its  original  state,  so  that  analogically  the  remorseless  money  grab- 
ber may  sociologically  be  a  cancer,  for  cancerous  tissue  may  over- 
develop some  structures,  without  regard  to  associated  parts,  which 
it  may  strangle,  and  ulcerate,  and  it  may  with  indifference  cause 
intense  suffering. 

When  a  man  falls  helpless,  as  when  drunk,  sick  or  wounded, 
his  pockets  are  liable  to  be  picked.  Wild  animals  fight  over  their 
food  ;  men  do  so  in  less  recognized  ways.  The  starling  bullies  the 
thrushes  out  of  what  they  find  to  eat  and  fishes  snatch  food  from 
each  other  when  they  can.  The  grabbing  instinct  of  most  animals 
has  sole  regard  to  appetite,  but  with  the  monkey  tribe  there  is 
often  the  added  mischievous  disposition.  In  the  thefts  of  the 
Amazon  sapajou  there  is  more  wasted  than  stolen.  The  capuchins 
are  very  mischievous  and  covetous  and  are  great  hypocrites  in 
pretending  perfect  innocence  when  making  efforts  to  steal  food. 
The  gannets  are  like  lawyers  in  their  fighting  each  other  in  the 


350  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

air  for  food,  stealing  fish  from  one  another  and  afterwards  roost- 
ing together  the  best  of  friends. 

The  macaque  of  Barbary  robs  gardens.  The  wolverine  will 
steal  and  conceal  things  of  no  use  to  it,  such  as  guns,  axes,  blan- 
kets, etc.,  and  is  very  cunning  in  avoiding  traps. 

Some  birds,  like  the  magpie  and  raven,  are  attracted  to  glitter- 
ing or  bright  objects  like  silver  or  jewels,  and  resemble  in  this 
respect  the  rubbish-gathering  dements  of  insane  asylums.  The 
regent  and  bower  birds  have  an  ornamenting,  decorating  propen- 
sity, and  love  to  display  their  colored  and  shiny  trophies  about 
their  premises,  but  the  miserly  raven  and  magpie  hide  their  steal- 
ings. 

The  snarling  and  growling  of  beasts  of  prey  are  to  dismay 
others  who  might  grab  their  food.  Sometimes  we  hear  a  cat  or 
dog  indulge  in  this  ancient  method  of  self-protection,  but  domestic 
animals  generally  have  largely  outgrown  the  savagery  of  their 
wild  progenitors. 

A  developed  species  of  grabbing  occurs  in  cuckoos,  some  of 
which  are  parasitic,  though  others  build  their  own  nests.  Some 
victimize  small  birds  and  some  throw  or  drive  the  rightful  owners 
from  nests  which  they  then  appropriate.  Some  deposit  their 
cuckoo  eggs  in  the  stolen  nest  and  break  the  eggs  of  other  birds  to 
make  room  for  their  own  eggs,  while  other  cuckoos  after  being 
hatched  live  in  peace  with  the  ofifspring  of  the  host.  When  the 
common  cuckoo  is  mobbed  by  other  birds  it  is  owing  to  its  resem- 
blance to  the  hawk  and  not  through  recognition  of  its  evicting 
nature.  The  male  cuckoos  are  more  numerous  and  so  they  are 
polyandrous  and  the  female  does  all  the  courting  and  there  are 
often  fierce  quarrels  and  fights.  The  female  calls  to  the  male  and 
it  is  instantly  answered.  They  select  the  bird's  nest  in  which  are 
eggs  more  nearly  resembling  their  own,  though  there  is  variability 
in  the  coloring.  Crested  cuckoos  select  the  nests  of  crows  and 
magpies  with  eggs  resembling  their  own,  nor  do  they  eject  the 
rightful  owners.  The  Indian  pied  crested  cuckoo  lays  blue  eggs 
resembling  in  color  those  of  the  babbling  thrushes  in  whose  nest 
it  places  them.  Apparently  the  young  cuckoo  ejects  the  rightful 
owners  when  the  young^are  hatched,  as  the  babblers  are  often  seen 
in  attendance  upon  their  parasitic  dependents  without  any  of  their 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  35I 

own  young  being  of  the  party ;  sometimes  the  cuckoo  puts  two  of 
its  eggs  into  a  babbler's  nest,  and  it  is  said  to  break  some  of  the 
foster  parents'  eggs  to  make  room  for  its  own.  Colonel  Butler 
says  that  when  they  discover  a  nest  of  a  babbler  which  does  not 
suit  them  to  lay  in  the  cuckoos  invariably  destroy  the  eggs  al- 
ready there  by  driving  a  hole  into  them  with  their  bills  and  suck- 
ing the  contents.  In  the  Himalayas  the  hawk  cuckoo  is  parasitic 
on  the  babbling  thrushes. 

The  variable  color  of  the  cuckoo  eggs  are  according  to  the  bird 
imposed  upon,  and  colors  are  hereditary.  The' golden  cuckoo  de- 
vours eggs  of  the  cape  sparrow  to  make  room  for  its  own.  The 
American  cuckoo  is  a  great  plunderer  of  eggs  of  small  birds  and 
is  said  to  even  devour  the  helpless  offspring.  The  young  koel  is 
black  to  suit  the  plumage  of  the  yellow-wattled  myna,  for  they 
might  not  be  fed  were  they  brown  like  their  mother.  But  other 
birds  care  for  their  parasites  without  regard  to  much  resemblance^ 
so  this  supposition  may  not  be  necessary.  The  Savannah  cuckoos 
pick  ticks  from  cattle,  being  devourers  of  parasites  and  rendering 
mutual  service  to  the  host,  but  the  service  is  not  from  generous 
motives. 

This  cuckoo  propensity  is  frequent  among  some  human  beings 
of  the  parasitic  class  and  is  always  associated  with  a  low  degree 
of  intelligence  as  a  rule.  At  least  the  disposition  to  wreck  others 
for  the  sake  of  gain  was  more  common  in  a  crude  stage  of  the 
ape-like  man's  career  if  it  does  not  belong  to  an  even  lower  stage. 
Certainly  impudence  and  cruel  selfishness  are  essentials  to  a 
human  cuckoo  nature. 

This  ingrained  natural  acquisitiveness  comes  to  the  front  when 
the  mind  is  deeply  impaired,  in  terminal  dementia,  the  mental 
graveyard  to  which  all  chronic  insanities  tend.  Terminal  dements 
pick  up  and  secrete  rubbish  of  all  kinds  such  as  pieces  of  worth- 
less broken  glass,  rags,  buttons,  pebbles,  bright  objects,  old  bones, 
etc.,  and  the  females  are  worst  in  this  repect.  An  old  negro  at 
the  county  asylum  would  gather  as  much  as  fifty  pounds  a  week 
and  carry  it  around  in  his  pockets  and  shirt  bosom,  until  periodi- 
cally disgorged  by  someone.  There  is  a  low  estimate  of  values  in 
such  cases,  a  childish  preference  for  glitter.  Such  things  as  rep- 
resent value,  like  money,  would  not  be  regarded  except  as  addi- 


352  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

tional  rubbish.    Klepotmania  depends  upon  defective  mental  con- 
trol, reverting  to  the  animal  inclination  to  steal. 

Novelists  like  Wilkie  Collins  cater  to  the  popular  comprehen- 
sion in  such  novels  as  "No  Name,"  based  upon  social  grabbings, 
yearnings  and  scheming  for  money,  all  about  as  interesting  to 
the  philosopher  as  the  capers  and  bickerings  of  cats  and  dogs,  and 
about  as  sensible.  Robert  Ingersoll  said,  "There  would  be  an 
air  bottling  company,  limited,  if  it  were  possible." 

Involuntarily  yet  instantly,  and  though  subsequently  ashamed 
of  it,  when  calamity  befalls  others  the  selfish  heart  asks  itself 
"How  can  I  profit  by  this  ?"  Hearing  of  another's  good  fortune 
the  thought  occurs,  "What  a  lot  I  could  do  with  that  amount  of 
money !"  Misfortunes  we  do  not  care  to  hear  about,  especially 
if  likely  to  entail  inconvenience  upon  ourselves,  but  good  news 
may  be  enjoyed  as  possible  participants  ourselves. 

The  world  loves  people  to  be  good-natured  because  it  expects 
to  take  advantage  of  them.  A  clerk  who  was  advised  to  sing  at  his 
work  said  he  did  not  dare  to  do  so  for  all  the  other  clerks  would 
try  to  borrow  money  of  him. 

Society  is  divisible  into  workers,  beggars  and  thieves,  whether 
the  society  is  high  or  low.  "One  must  live"  is  the  excuse  of  the 
smugglers  in  "Monte  Cristo."  Hoarding  and  squandering  are 
animal  traits  and  insanity  may  bring  either  to  the  front.  The 
lesser  form  of  insanity,  mania,  may  exhibit  wild  extravagance, 
alcoholic  insanity  also,  but  the  graver  disease,  paretic  dementia,  is 
similarly  inclined  to  spendthrift  habits.  In  the  squandering  there 
is  disregard  of  the  future  as  to  hunger,  or  other  privations.  The 
Australian  savage  is  improvident,  and  so  are  many  animals  and 
civilized  people.  Thrift  is  a  developed  mental  state  of  the  more 
provident  sort  and  is  independent  of  extreme  selfishness  or  gen- 
erosity, high  or  low  intellect  and  station  in  life. 

John  Fiske^  remarks  the  difiference  between  the  desire  to  accu- 
mulate on  the  part  of  the  civilized  and  the  improvidence  of  the 
savage  arising  from  his  inability  to  realize  the  consequences  of 
shiftlessness,  so  the  careless  man  in  money  matters  is  a  barbarian 
to  that  extent.  Th€  happy-go-lucky  person  may  be  honest  in  hop- 
Excursions  of  an  Evolutionist,  p.  218. 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  353 

ing  to  be  able  to  pay,  or  dishonest  in  not  intending  to  do  so.  In 
either  case  he  is  not  the  evolved  type  of  person  who  tries  to  see 
ahead  and  incur  no  obligations  avoidable.  Much  imprudence  and 
crime  is  due  to  slothful  expectation  that  things  will  come  right 
some  way.  The  power  to  form  distinct  mental  pictures  of  future 
matters  imparts  self-control. 

The  natural  snatch  and  hold-on  instinct  is  evident  in  young 
children,  who  have  to  be  trained,  especially  in  table  manners,  and 
to  be  less  selfish.  Children  raised  without  other  children  to  share 
with  are  noticeably  more  selfish  than  others  who  have  been  com- 
pelled to  h^e  regard  for  their  brothers  or  sisters.  And  in  this 
we  also  see  how  sympathy  grows  by  familiarity.  Showmen  say 
that  it  is  a  dangerous  thing  to  attempt  the  distribution  of  circus 
tickets  or  souvenir  advertising  matters  to  a  crowd  of  school  chil- 
dren, as  in  their  eager  selfishness  they  trample  on  each  other  as 
the  Russian  peasants  did  at  the  distribution  of  souvenirs  when  the 
Czar  Nicholas  was  crowned. 

One  may  have  the  grab  instinct  strongly  developed  in  one  direc- 
tion and  not  in  others,  and  the  family  or  public,  one  or  the  other, 
may  see  the  worst  side  of  the  grabber  according  as  his  sympathies 
or  fears  determine. 

In  street  cars  a  man  may  exhibit  selfish  disregard  of  others  in 
keeping  two  seats  while  others  have  none.  Hotels  and  steam- 
boats throw  away  food  that  would  keep  thousands  of  poor  in  pro- 
visions. 

Tom  Hood  speaks  of  gold,  as 

"Spurned  by  the  young,  and  hugged  by  the  old 
Even  to  the  verge  of  the  church-yard  mold." 

The  inexperience  of  youth  leads  to  recklessness  and  the  recol- 
lections of  the  aged  to  miserliness.  They  learn  that  "there  is  no 
such  friend  as  a  dollar  or  two,"  and  knowing  that  the  young  often 
cast  oflf  the  aged,  heartlessly,  the  saving  disposition  indicates 
thoughtfulness  and  experience,  either  acquired  or  inherited.  The 
anxiety  of  the  senile  dement  centers  in  his  property,  but  he  has 
lost  the  mental  ability  to  properly  protect  it.  Squandering  and 
saving  are  not  exclusively  human.  In  some  ways  man  is  often 
more  reckless  or  more  rapacious  than  other  animals. 


354 


THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


If  some  Other  intelligence  were  to  study  man  as  we  study  an 
anthill,  he  would  take  him  in  the  aggregate.  He  would  say: 
This  species,  spread  over  almost  all  the  world,  numbers  about 
fourteen  hundred  million,  a  number  less  than  the  infusoria  in  a 
cupful  of  stagnant  pond  water.  Of  these  about  two  hundred  and 
fifty  million  are  without  a  shred  of  clothing,  and  seven  hundred 
million  are  clothed  only  in  their  loins.  The  nude  hold  a  majority 
over  the  clad.  I  believe  this  bipedal  mammal  calls  himself  homo 
sapiens,  but  taking  him  in  the  aggregate  the  better  name  would 
be  homo  sylvestris,  for  only  the  more  favored  have  got  out  of  the 
woods.  The  creature  seems  to  toil,  but  he  remains  poor.  He  is 
improvident.  He  does  not  ''take  thought  enough  of  to-morrow." 
Nearly  three  hundred  millions  of  the  human  race  build  no  homes 
and  have  no  shelter  except  what  nature  affords  in  clefts  and 
caves.^ 

When  a  graveyard  is  filled  and  those  buried  therein  are  for- 
gotten the  land  is  sold  for  building  lots  and  the  tombstones  find 
their  way  to  soda  water  factories  or  lime-kilns. 

Dead  or  living  are  thrown  out  of  their  homes  by  legal  or  ille- 
gal processes  as  remorsely  as  the  cuckoo  destroys  the  eggs  of  his 
foster  mother  or  the  gambler  pockets  the  wages  of  the  dupe  be- 
cause some  other  would  have  done  it,  or  the  dupe  would  have 
swindled  the  gambler  if  he  could. 

Lady  Burdett-Coutts  offered  to  build  water  reservoirs  and 
works  for  Palestine,  and  the  Sultan  of  Turkey  stipulated  that  he 
should  have  charge  of  the  money  and  construction,  but  as  the  or- 
dinary politician  who  controls  the  building  of  the  Philadelphia 
City  Hall  is  satisfied  with  one-half  the  appropriation  the  divine 
porte  would  be  satisfied  only  with  all  of  it,  so  the  Jews  remain 
without  proper  drinking  water.  It  appears  to  depend  upon  cir- 
cumstances whether  the  plunderer  is  honored  or  not.  A  Czar, 
a  Napoleon  or  a  king  will  have  his  praises  sung  for  centuries  for 
doing  what  a  Cecil  Rhodes,  Clive  or  Warren  Hastings  were  con- 
demned for  doing.  The  nation,  however,  accepted  the  spoils,  but 
tabooed  the  spoilers  because  they  were  not  royal.  History  abounds 
in  tales  of  usurpation,  and  imposition  such  as  the  salt  tax  and  the 

'W.  D.  Gunning,  "Open  Court,"  September,  1887. 


ACQUISITIVENESS. 


355 


ruthless  grabbing  by  the  powerful  whenever  a  grab  is  possible, 
but  it  is  not  always  conceded  that  the  oppressed  would  turn  op- 
pressor if  he  could.  It  is  a  strange  thing,  though,  that  even  liberty- 
enjoying  people  may  sink  rapidly  to  robbing  others  of  liberty.  It 
is  well-known  that  a  Yankee  wife  of  a  slaveholder  in  the  South 
United  States  and  a  Yankee  overseer  of  slaves  were  the  most 
cruel  of  slave  drivers,  just  as  renegades  try  to  show  their  loyalty 
to  their  new  masters  by  outdoing  them.  Occasionally  Russian 
statesmen  acknowledge  that  the  grinding  poverty  of  sixty  million 
peasants  can  no  longer  be  ignored  safely.  The  farmers  look  in 
vain  to  the  Czar  or  to  a  Prince  Oldenburg,  but  the  officials  con- 
tinue to  take  all  the  farmers  have,  to  pay  royal  and  church  taxes, 
or  to  compel  them  to  sell  their  crops  in  autumn,  at  any  price,  to 
pay  the  taxes,  which  amounts  to  the  same  as  taking  everything. 
The  moujik's  only  solace  is  in  getting  drunk  to  forget  his  misery. 

The  founders  of  our  American  government  intended  to  give 
every  family  a  free  home  of  i6o  acres  of  land  through  its  home- 
stead and  pre-emption  laws,  but  where  one  person  has  benefited 
legitimately  by  complying  with  the  law  thousands  of  instances  of 
evasions  have  enabled  land  grabbers  to  absorb  the  larger  tracts  of 
land. 

Conservatism  tends  to  pile  up  wealth  though  organization  and 
a  settled  method  of  earning  and  accumulating  becomes  the  ac- 
cepted and  usual  one.  Interferences  with  these  customary  affairs 
provoke  opposition  whether  the  interference  is  to  rob  the  organiza- 
tion or  prevent  it  from  robbing  others.  Priesthoods  with  interests 
vested  in  maintaining  superstition  rave  with  anger  if  a  reformer 
unsettles  things.  Capitalists  embarked  in  a  commercial  undertak- 
ing, however  ethical  or  piratical,  suppress  any  opposition  whether 
the  opposition  is  to  benefit  the  public  or  not  at  their  expense. 

The  present  Greeks  have  a  priest  or  monk  to  each  200  of  the 
population  and  the  miracles  of  the  Virgin  take  the  place  of  all  the 
ancient  oracles  and  other  priestcraft. 

Queen  Olga  had  the  bible  translated  into  modem  Greek  as  the 
common  people  do  not  understand  classic  Greek,  and  the  profes- 
sors and  students  raised  a  riot  of  protest  against  disturbing  their 
"vested  interests."  As  Tom  Hood  says,  the  Rae  Wilsons  would, 
if  possible,  make  a  rotten  borough  of  heaven.    The  Borgia  and  de 


356  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Medici  families  arranged  to  group  their  tombs  about  that  of 
Christ,  which  they  tried  to  have  brought  to  Italy,  and  thus  grab 
the  exclusive  right  to  paradise  which  this  kind  of  sepulchre  would 
secure  them. 

Another  instance  of  vested  interests  preserved  occurs  in  the 
theological  domination  of  colleges  by  ecclesiastical  professors  at 
high  salaries  teaching  their  ignorant  but  "moral"  nonsense,  while 
a  scientific  professor  in  the  same  place  is  snubbed  with  a  small 
salarv,  unless  he  is  a  sensational  sciolist,  when  the  noise  he  makes 
entitles  him  to  nearly  as  much  as  the  holy  men  get. 

The  development  of  selfishness  is  seen  in  higher  conceptions  of 
selfishness;  desires  become  broadened  and  to  pander  to  them  re- 
gard for  others  must  be  had,  which  in  time  becomes  habit.  The 
new  plane  of  selfishness  .develops  a  stiil  higher  plane,  and  under 
tbe  influence  of  multitudes  of  things  working  at  the  same  time, 
such  as  "religion,"  Mrs.  Grundy  and  expediency  ideas,  the  old 
original  selfishness  becomes  hidden  or  altogether  repressed  and 
finally  "altruism"  appears  in  such  steps  as  endowing  institutions 
of  charity  and  learning,  in  order  to  perpetuate  the  name  of  the 
philanthropist. 

The  utter  change  of  selfishness  into  generosity  suggests  the  dif- 
ferences between  the  inorganic  and  organic  compounds,  though 
the  latter  is  made  of  the  former. 

A  dramatic  conception  could  be  framed  of  the  idea  that  an  evil 
influence  defied  a  higher  power  to  destroy  selfishness  in  a  world 
founded  upon  it,  and  by  natural  processes  step  by  step  selfishness 
was  converted  into  generosity,  egoism  into  altruism.  But  this  is 
a  scientific  use  of  the  imagination,  not  a  new  theological  doctrine. 
Repeatedly  in  the  experiences  of  the  world  some  one  person 
and  his  family  managed  to  get  control  of  the  service  of  other  fam- 
ilies by  fair  or  foul  means  and  in  time  the  exactions  grew  more 
and  more  hard  to  bear.  Occasionally  a  people  was  sturdy  enough 
to  put  a  limit  to  these  demands,  but  the  rule  was  that  submission 
grew  with  arrogance  till  there  was  a  great  gulf  between  the  com- 
mon people  and  the  "chosen  of  the  Lord."  Barons  would  here 
and  there  grow  into  kings,  through  aggression  and  favorable  cir- 
cumstances, and  make  the  lesser  barons  and  their  subjects  serve 
them.    If  this  king  oppressed  both  barons  and  people  a  little  too 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  357 

much  we  may  have  an  instance  of  the  barons  actually  siding  with 
the  people  and  forcing  concessions,  such  as  Magna  Charta  from 
King  John.  Little  kings  reigning  over  small  districts,  such  as 
those  into  which  England  was  divided,  struggled  against  each 
other  in  time  for  over-kingship,  or  kings  over  kings.  Emperor 
was  a  title  more  generally  adopted  for  that  position  later.  The 
same  struggle  went  on  in  Ireland  but  there  was  lack  of  cohesion 
among  the  subjects  of  petty  kingdoms  there,  and  instead  of  over- 
kings  subjugating  the  under-kings  the  under-kings  multiplied  and 
fought  one  another,  so  that  while  England  in  this  respect  was  like 
the  many-celled  animal  governed  by  a  central  nervous  system,  Ire- 
land was  still  in  the  fission  stage  of  casting  off  cells  from  cells, 
without  forming  a  central  governing  ganglion. 

It  matters  nothing  what  the  one  in  control  may  be  called, 
whether  one  of  a  party,  as  an  oligarchy,  a  priesthood,  a  cabal,  a 
Tammany  political  society,  a  baron,  count,  duke  or  king,  emperor 
or  tyrant,  the  principle  remains  the  same,  the  mere  name  tells 
nothing  as  to  what  the  people  receive  in  the  way  of  government. 
A  president  may  have  tyrannical  aspirations,  and  one  who  reigns 
as  dictator  or  tyrant  may  be  mild  and  just,  but  the  people  attach 
such  importance  to  mere  titles  that  a  change  of  name  calms  them, 
as  though  painting  the  leopard  changed  its  nature.  Augustus  ap- 
peased the  Romans  as  a  title  for  rulers,  and  presidente  in  South 
American  states  covers  more  brutal  tyrannous  power  than  Caesar 
could  imagine.  Sparta  was  an  oligarchy  and  Athens  a  democracy 
and  friend  of  the  people,  hence  to  some  extent  there  was  class 
war  all  over  Greece.  The  nobles  were  for  Sparta  and  the  people 
for  Athens.  But  history  is  full  of  kings  grabbing  from  the  people 
and  each  other,  over-kings  putting  them  down,  barons  swelling 
into  counts,  dukes  and  lords  or  kiiigs  reducing  other  kings  to 
tmderlordship.  So  long  as  the  upper  ruler  was  recognized  as 
such  the  under  rulers  could  be  imbecile  or  otherwise  impotent  fig- 
ure-heads. When  Bismarck  was  told  of  the  dementia  of  the  kings 
of  Saxony  and  Bavaria  he  said  it  would  make  them  all  the  safer 
as  kings  for  his  imperial  master. 

Charles  the  Second  of  Spain  and  his  wife  were  rapacious  in 
the  extreme.  She  vented  her  spite  against  Cortez  because  he  re- 
served for  his  wife  some  jewels  she  coveted.     The  bloodthirsty 


358  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Aztecs  were  robbed  by  the  cruel  Spaniards  and  the  royal  pair 
wanted  to  grab  everything  their  undergrabber  Cortez  could  bring, 
to  the  last  trinket  Cortez  saved  for  his  wife.  And  these  were  the 
Lord's  anointed.  And  again  names  were  no  guide  to  the  nature 
of  the  robbery.  "Benevolences"  were  a  species  of  extortion  by 
Edward  II,  Richard  II,  and  Edward  IV,  wherein  direct  canvass 
was  made  among  the  subjects  for  gifts.  Under  "free  will  offer- 
ings" blackmail  extortion  was  practiced  of  the  meanest  sort.  Evo- 
lution has  improved  this  process  by  disguising  it  from  the  loyal 
subjects,  but  were  it  to  cease  they  would  be  amazed  at  how  sud- 
denly rich  the  common  people  would  grow. 

After  the  conquest  and  pillage  of  Mexico,  Bogota  and  Peru 
the  Spaniards  looked  for  new  fields  and  started  on  the  quest  of 
"El  Dorado."  It  was  in  the  search  for  the  seven  cities  of  Cibola, 
said  to  be  paved  with  gold,  that  caused  Coronado's  march  north- 
ward into  what  is  now  Colorado  and  the  Black  Hills  of  the  United 
States,  in  Dakota,  and  the  disasters  that  overtook  his  party.  Ponce 
de  Leon  wanted  to  grab  eternal  youth  in  his  search  for  the  fabu- 
lous springs  of  Florida,  very  much  as  the  equally  childish-minded 
alchemists  sought  for  the  "elixir  of  life"  and  the  philosopher's 
stone  that  could  turn  all  baser  metals  into  gold. 

The  old  Persian  Saadi  ("The  Gulistan")  records  instances  of 
rapacity  being  robbed  by  the  rapacious,  a  caliph  robbing  a  tax 
collector,  a  king  shamed  into  justice,  cases  of  extortion,  pretexts, 
subterfuges,  and  men*tions  that  an  orphan's  cries  shake  the 
Almighty's  throne  (but  the  shaking  does  not  seem  to  help  the  or- 
phan). The  bible  speaks  of  swallowers  of  widow's  houses  and 
the  old  records  point  to  the  ancients  having  all  the  animal's  pro- 
pensities up  to  date. 

The  celebrated  impeachment  case  of  Warren  Hastings,  1785 
to  1795,  was  brought  to  a  lame  and  impotent  conclusion  through 
no  more  money  existing  to  carry  on  the  contest.  Hastings 
grabbed  for  England  from  the  Rajahs  who  grabbed  from  the  Hin- 
doos, and  England  kicked  Hastings  for  having  no  more  to  sur- 
render. 

The  League  of  Greece  was  directed  to  mere  plunder,  and  sel- 
fish political  aggrandizement  was  what  brought  the  Romans  into 
Greece.    "In  the  end,  B.  C.  189,  the  League  was  stripped  by  the 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  359 

Romans  of  even  its  nominal  independence  and  sank  into  con- 
temptible servitude.^  A  people  who  appeal  to  a  foreign  nation  to 
help  them  usually  end  in  being  subjugated  by  the  foreigners. 
Often  has  distress  appealed  for  help  and  found  itself  in  the 
clutches  of  money  sharks.  '' 

Piracy  in  the  days  of  King  William  was  very  common  and  re- 
spectable in  New  York,  and  even  parsons  had  interests  in  the 
*'Red  Sea  trade"  and  would  not  favor  attacks  upon  their  sources 
of  revenue. 

The  daring  reformer  would  be  destroyed  were  he  to  attempt 
opposition  to  established  customs  such  as  those  of  New  York 
merchants  who  grew  rich  and  happy  upon  the  murder  and  robbery 
by  their  sailors  and  ships  outfitted  for  pirate  business.  At  pres- 
ent we  have  advanced  to  disguising  from  our  families  and  our- 
selves any  transactions  practically  piratical  but  not  usually  re- 
garded as  such. 

The  history  of  the  Panama  canal  scandal  is  recent  in  which 
there  was  royal  sanction  for  wholesale  robbery  of  the  French  peo- 
ple, and  in  such  intrigue  more  often  the  honest  opposer  of  it  is 
crushed  by  the  victims  he  seeks  to  benefit. 

Knaves  will  desert  a  cause  they  see  is  failing  whether  it  is 
good  or  bad,  but  the  best  and  the  worst  organizations  will  attract 
to  it  those  who  are  on  the  watch  for  place  and  plunder.  So  we 
find  bad  men  sometimes  heading  a  good  cause  and  rascals  have 
managed  to  worm  themselves  into  high  places  in  church,  state 
and  society,  posing  often  as  representatives  of  exalted  principles. 

Diodorus  Siculus  says  that  "though  slaves  and  criminals  en- 
riched their  masters  to  an  incredible  extent  by  toiling  night  and 
day,  compelled  by  the  lash  to  work  so  incessantly  that  they  died 
of  the  hardships  in  the  caverns  they  had  themselves  dug  and  such 
as  by  great  vigor  continued  alive  were  in  such  misery  that  death 
was  preferable."  The  aborigines  were  forced  into  the  mines  by 
Spaniards  in  the  new  world  as  the  Carthaginians  traded  in  human 
beings  to  find  slaves  for  their  mines  in  the  Iberian  peninsula. 

The  investigation  of  the  coal  miners'  strike  in  1902  in  Penn- 
sylvania revealed  incredible  instances  of  rapacity  on  the  part  of 
mine  owners  who  practically  enslaved  working  men  and  children, 

^  E.  A.  Freeman,  History  of  Feudal  Government,  i,  ch.  7-9. 


360  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

and  the  subsequent  endeavor  of  coal  dealers  in  the  large  cities  to 
conspire  with  railways  to  make  a  fictitious  shortage  to  control 
prices  was  equally  characteristic,  resulting  in  the  perishing  of 
thousands  by  cold  and  the  enriching  of  a  few  coal  barons.  Slavery 
has  many  disguises.  Baer  says  he  owns  the  mines  by  "divine 
right,"  the  same  old  claim  of  the  grabber. 

One  of  the  most  apparent  filchers  of  everything,  in  the  way  of 
a  society,  was  the  Tammany  political  order  of  New  York.  One 
of  its  head  rascals,  Tweed,  held  that  every  man  had  his  price  and 
acted  upon  that  idea.  He  stole  from  the  people,  and  his  family, 
enriched  by  his  thievery,  deserted  him  and  allowed  him  to  die  in 
the  Tombs  prison.     They  inherited  his  heartlessness. 

While  pretending  to  oppose  trusts  in  behalf  of  the  people  who 
were  robbed  by  them,  Tammany  arranged  one  of  the  most  cruel 
affairs  of  that  nature,  an  ice  trust,  which  would  have  literally 
emptied  the  pennies  from  the  pockets  of  the  poor.  The  Mazet  in- 
quiry in  New  York  City  shows  that  Croker  was  selling  human 
bodies  to  the  hospitals,  but  this  is  merely  a  feature  of  boodleism, 
his  blackmailing  of  big  corporations  and  the  police  selling  pro- 
tection to  saloonkeepers,  thieves  and  prostitutes  are  also  mere  inci- 
dents of  this  species  of  grab  game.  While  I  was  pathologist  of 
the  Chicago  Insane  Asylum  the  county  commissioners  told  me 
that  the  relatives  of  the  dead  patients  objected  to  autopsies,  and 
it  took  me  some  time  to  ascertain  that  this  was  a  mere  invented 
pretext  to  enable  these  commissioners  to  sell  the  bodies  for  $30 
each  to  medical  colleges,  and  this  again  is  a  mere  incident  in  po- 
litical stealings,  for  when  politicians  have  charge  of  public  char- 
ities and  control  asylums,  poor  houses  and  hospitals,  the  poor  and 
sick  receive  about  a  tenth  of  what  is  appropriated  and  are  mal- 
treated besides. 

These  politicians  usually  grow  gradually  bolder  in  their  greed 
and  make  their  onslaughts  upon  the  people  more  and  more  direct, 
for  instance,  at  one  time  the  New  York  aldermen  tried  to  build 
dwellings  for  themselves  in  Central  Park,  and  professed  that  they 
could  not  understand  why  they  should  not  be  permitted  to  do  so. 
An  extension  of  this  spirit  would  have  restored  the  Egyptian  cor- 
vee and  the  multitude  would  have  been  hauling  stones  for  alder- 
manic  palaces.     And  these  aldermen  were  of  the  "plain  people" 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  361 

also,  a  hint  that  human  nature  extends  from  the  king  on  his  throne 
to  the  monkey  who  grabs  cocoanuts  from  his  weaker  brethren  in 
the  trees.  Tammany  also  grew  bold  enough  in  1901  to  put  chairs 
in  the  park  for  which  there  was  to  be  pay  collected  for  sitting  in 
them.  This  innovation  led  to  a  mob  destruction  of  the  chairs ; 
so  the  people  sometimes  recognize  and  resent  imposition,  and  rob- 
bery, but  not  always.  Imposition,  by  the  way,  is  derived  from  the 
French  word  for  tax,  and  tariff  comes  from  the  word  Tarifa, 
where  pirates  exacted  tribute  from  Mediterranean  trade.  In  the 
one  case  the  word  has  grown  to  indicate  something  reprehensible 
and  in  the  other  case  a  dreaded  name  has  grown  respectable.  The 
high  tariff  Hohenzollern  family  is  very  exalted  in  Germany. 

Spencer  mentions  the  great  opposition  of  the  small  traders  in 
the  outlying  towns  against  good  roads  being  built  to  London  be- 
cause they  would  lose  trade,  not  caring  for  the  benefit  the  peo- 
ple would  secure;  similarly  department  stores  which  sell  every- 
thing for  reduced  prices  were  fought  by  small  storekeepers  who 
could  not  compete  with  the  low  prices,  and  asked  customers  to 
prefer  their  high  prices.  The  ''collective  wisdom"  of  parliament 
undertook  to  arouse  patriotism  to  the  pitch  of  being  willing  to 
pay  higher  for  English  than  for  foreign  goods  by  ordering  the 
latter  to  be  marked  as  such,  and  the  ''collective  wisdom"  was  sur- 
prised to  find  that  the  marks  attracted  purchasers  who  fancied 
that  goods  from  abroad  were  better  than  the  domestic  articles. 
Thus  there  was  misapprehension  through  grabbing  interests  not 
comprehending  each  other. 

Then  the  people  may  exert  individually  their  selfish  notions 
to  such  a  display  as  to  attract  demagogues  who  "give  the  people 
what  they  think  they  want,"  and  this  ignorance  and  mistaken  sel- 
fishness in  all  ages  have  enabled  the  minority  to  rule  over  the  ma- 
jority, whether  in  monarchy,  oligarchy,  republic  or  whatsoever 
government. 

Before  the  Union  Pacific  Railroad  was  built  over  the  Ameri- 
can continent  a  canal  across  the  isthmus  would  have  been  consid- 
ered a  great  blessing  through  shortening  the  distance  to  California 
by  thousands  of  miles.  When  the  great  grab  scheme  that  resulted 
in  the  construction  of  the  railway  was  successful  the  railroad  in- 
terests opposed  the  canal  construction,  while  the  Californians, 


362  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

knowing  it  would  cheapen  freight  rates,  favored  it.  But  later 
when  China  began  to  open  up  to  traffic,  California  and  the  west 
generally  opposed  the  canal  construction,  because  it  might  take 
trade  direct  from  New  England  to  China,  so  the  East  Coast  in- 
terests were  aroused  to  favor  the  Nicaraugua  Canal  building. 
Thus  short-sighted  selfishness  is  universal  in  spite  of  it  frequently 
happening  that  in  the  end  all  are  benefited  by  a  great  innovation. 

Rulers  like  Nicholas  III  of  Russia,  however  well  intentioned, 
are  surrounded  by  grabbers  who  oppose  any  concessions  to  the 
rabble,  and  there  is  incessant  dinning  of  bad  advice  in  the  ears 
of  all  occupants  of  thrones  and  presidential  chairs.  General  Grant 
was  surrounded  by  sycophants  who  talked  imperialism  constantly. 
Americans  can  recall  when  there  was  a  talk  of  "a  strong  govern- 
ment" by  the  spoils  system  element. 

A  Pennsylvania  senator  who  bought  his  way  against  the  peo- 
ple's opposition  refused  to  endorse  a  treaty  of  peace  with  Spain 
until  he  could  use  it  as  a  means  to  blackmail  or  sandbag  some  one 
out  of  something.  Public  interests  aie  prostituted  when  a  syndi- 
cate induces  a  school  board  to  change  from  good  text  books  to 
very  inferior  ones  because  a  profit  can  be  made  by  so  doing,  and 
changes  in  the  army  and  navy  uniforms  are  often  made  for  con- 
tract profits  to  high  officials  though  a  hardship  upon  the  salaries 
of  officers  affected. 

Walter  Mapes  in  A.  D.  1200,"*  the  talented  writer,  described 
the  rotten  conditions  of  court  and  church.  The  whole  spirit  of 
Henry  and  his  court  in  their  struggle  with  Becket  for  supremacy 
is  illustrated  in  the  confession  of  the  imaginary  prelate  Bishop 
Goliath.  The  veil  is  stripped  from  the  corruption  of  the  mediaeval 
church,  its  indolence,  its  thirst  for  gain,  its  secret  immorality.  The 
whole  body  of  the  clergy  from  pope  to  hedge  priest  is  painted  as 
busy  in  the  chase  for  gain ;  what  escapes  the  bishop  is  snapped  up 
by  the  archdeacon,  what  escapes  the  archdeacon  is  nosed  and 
hunted  down  by  the  dean,  while  a  host  of  minor  officials  prowl 
hungrily  around  these  greater  marauders.  Out  of  the  crowd  of 
figures  which  fills  the  canvas  of  the  satirist,  pluralist  vicars,  ab- 
bots, purple  as  their  wines,  monks  feeding  and  chattering  together 
like  parrots  in  the  refectory,  rises  the  Philistine  bishop,  light  of 

*  Green's  History  of  England,  p.  150. 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  363 

purpose,  void  of  conscience,  lost  in  sensuality,  drunken,  unchaste, 
the  Goliath  who  sums  up  the  enormities  of  all." 

In  grateful  contrast  with  these  pictures  are  the  touching  de- 
scriptions of  the  village  priest  in  Gerald  Griffin's  "Collegians." 
The  dear  old  soul  sacrifices  all  his  comfort  and  time  for  the  hum- 
blest of  his  parishioners,  and  in  the  Italian  "I  Promessi  Sposi," 
the  broad-minded,  kind-hearted  bishop  tries  to  head  oi¥  the  epi- 
demic resulting  from  almost  animal  ignorance  of  the  people,  who 
are  preyed  upon  by  a  malevolent  selfish  parish  priest,  who  would 
undo  all  the  good  work  of  his  bishop  for  the  profit  the  priest  could 
secure. 

In  the  time  of  Charlemagne  Benedict  of  Anaine  was  a  terror 
to  evil-minded  monks  through  his  writings.  Montesquieu, 
though  born  an  aristocrat,  aimed  a  reaction  against  tyranny  in 
general  and  absolute  monarchy  in  particular.  He  desired  to  de- 
stroy despotism  and  elevate  the  idea  of  individual  freedom.  He 
clung  to  constitutional  monarchy;  an  optimist  by  temperament 
though  a  democrat  by  conviction.  He  originated  "citoyen"  in 
place  of  "subject."  He  hoped  much  from  Louis  XV,  but  when 
he  saw  that  today  was  to  be  as  yesterday  and  burdens  were  not  to 
be  removed  Montesquieu  became  the  mouthpiece  of  the  revolution. 
In  his  Parisian  letters  he  touches  upon  the  weakness  of  France 
in  political,  ecclesiastical  and  social  arrangements. 

During. the  civil  war  in  the  United  States,  Austria  and  France 
attempted  to  steal  Mexico,  but  when  the  war  ended  Napoleon 
withdrew  his  French  troops  and  left  Maximilian  to  get  out  of 
Mexico  with  his  Austrians  the  best  he  could.  The  Mexicans  cap- 
tured and  shot  him.  The  Monroe  doctrine  is  based  upon  the 
necessity  of  keeping  European  monarchies  from  gaining  any  more 
control  on  this  continent  than  they  have  got  already,  for  with 
their  past  histories  their  greed  would  surely  cause  grab  after  grab 
until  the  United  States  would  be  on  the  defensive  for  existence. 
It  is  best  to  protect  the  small  states  from  all  dangers,  even  that  of 
their  own  imbecile  management,  rather  than  have  them  clutched 
by  rapacious  foreigners  who  would  soon  have  their  fingers  on  our 
throat.  The  principle  in  the  Monroe  doctrine  is  simply  that  so 
long  as  we  can  make  Europe  fear  us  those  countries  must  be  left 
alone.    If  Europe  could  combine  to  destroy  us  she  would  do  it. 


364  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    IIIS    MIND. 

The  London  Spectator  calls  our  Monroe  doctrine  a  "dog  in 
the  manger  policy,"  that  the  United  States  will  neither  take  South 
America  nor  allow  anybody  else  to  do  so. 

The  fate  of  Africa  is  simply  that  of  a  continent  divided  against 
itself  and  nO'  one  intefering  with  invaders.  After  Carthage  was 
destroyed  North  Africa  was  ruled  over  by  Rome.  The  Moslem 
conquests  were  from  A.  D.  640  to  1171.  Egypt  and  the  Soudan 
fell  to  them  in  1250  and  15 17.  The  Portuguese  explored  the  At- 
lantic coast  in  141 5.  Dutch  and  English  colonization  of  South 
Africa  followed  with  the  establishment  of  Sierra  Leone  and  Libe- 
ria, and  in  1884  to  1891  the  partition  between  European  powers  of 
the  interior  of  Africa.  Great  Britain  and  Germany  quarreled 
over  respective  spheres  of  influence  on  the  Gulf  of  Guinea,  but 
reached  a  compromise  and  France  and  Germany  arrived  at  an 
understanding  concerning  the  slave  coast  and  Senegambia.^ 

The  balance  of  power  indicates  an  alliance  of  European  states 
to  keep  each  other  from  grabbing  weaker  states  and  thus  strength- 
ening one  at  the  expense  of  others.  It  is  an  armistice,  a  mere 
armed  neutrality  to  be  broken  up  whenever  opportunity  presents. 

When  Japan  uncovered  China's  weakness,  Russia,  England, 
Germany  and  France  rushed  in  to  secure  "spheres  of  influence," 
like  a  lot  of  children  finding  that  a  school  bully  was  really  a  cow- 
ard and  conclude  to  empty  his  pockets.  Even  Italy  came  swag- 
gering along  for  a  division.  Japan  captured  the  important  fortifi- 
cation Port  Arthur  from  the  Chinese,  and  was  quietly  dispos- 
sessed of  it  by  Russia.  Japan  has  been  watching  the  abstraction 
of  Manchuria  and  control  of  Corea  by  Russia,  but  wisely  bides  the 
time  when  a  protest  can  be  effective. 

When  the  Turkish  janissaries  were  killed  off  by  the  Sultan 
Russia  promptly  demanded  a  new  treaty  from  Turkey.  In  1878 
Turkey  was  prostrate  and  Russia  was  preparing  to  capture  Con- 
stantinople, but  a  British  fleet  was  sent  through  the  Dardanelles. 
In  1894  the  Armenian  outrages  grew  offensive,  but  as  no  Eu- 
ropean interest  was  affected  these  Christian  subjects  of  Turkey 
were  permitted  to  perish. 

The  United  States  has  been  no  exception  to  the  rule  that  na- 

®  A.  S.  White,  The  Development  of  Africa,  1892,  also  J.  S.  Keltic,  The 
Partition  of  Africa,  ch,  12,  S3- 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  365 

tions  grab  territory  when  and  where  they  can.  Of  course  there 
are  plenty  of  reasons,  as  thick  as  blackberries,  but  call  it  purchase, 
treaty  or  what  you  will,  it  amounts  to  the  same  in  the  end,  and 
probably  our  government  has  been  less  mean  and  rapacious  and 
more  inclined  to  give  an  equivalent  than  others  in  history.  We 
settled  on  New  England  lands  on  which  Indians  roamed,  but  they 
could  show  no  deeds  for  it.  We  acquired  lands  from  France  and 
Spain  which  those  countries  had  absorbed  from  the  savages  by 
"divine  right"  of  might.  We  made  numbers  of  treaties  with  wild 
tribes  in  the  west  only  to  break  those  treaties  when  it  suited  us 
under  the  pretext  that  the  savages  made  no  proper  use  of  the  coun- 
try ceded  to  them — the  idea  of  ceding  land  they  already  owned! 
Then  we  kept  them  moving  farther  on  till  what  the  Indian  trader 
and  the  Indian  agent  and  the  white  man's  whiskey  and  diseases 
left  of  them  could  be  gathered  into  still  smaller  reservations. 
Helen  Jackson  sums  up  many  of  the  dishonorable  dealings  of  the 
United  States  government  with  some  of  the  Indian  tribes,  in  a 
book  with  a  preface  by  Bishop  Whipple,  who  was  as  earnest  as 
Father  De  Smet  in  trying  to  help  the  Indian  against  the  white 
man's  swindling.  But  the  matter  is  treated  as  though  it  were 
unique  when  it  is  merely  the  old  world's  grabbing  way  ever  since 
there  was  anything  to  grab.  The  Cherokees  still  have  an  old 
claim  against  the  government,  and  the  last  Cherokee  will  be  its 
heir. 

The  average  American,  like  the  average  patriot  in  any  other 
land,  imagines  that  his  country  alone  should  expand  until  all  con- 
tiguous territory  was  taken  in.  Filibustero  Walker  in  1855-1860 
tried  to  annex  Mexico,  and  later  W.  A.  C.  Ryan,  another  filibus- 
tero, surrendered  his  life  to  the  Spaniards  in  an  endeavor  to  walk 
off  with  Cuba.  Poor  Jameson  tried  to  rush  South  Africa  into 
Great  Britain  and  was  scolded  for  his  failure,  but  his  successors 
finished  the  work  he  pioneered.  England  has  good  grab  and  hold- 
on  abilities.  Alark  Twain  said  that  there  is  a  special  verse  in  the 
bible  that  refers  to  England,  it  is,  "Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they 
shall  inherit  the  earth." 

In  1898  the  Nile  question  in  Egypt  was  discussed  by  England 
and  France  and  Marchand  tried  the  rush  to  Fashoda  and  found 
that  the  English  had  some  very  compromising  correspondence 


366  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

that  had  passed  between  the  French  commanders  and  the  natives 
with  uncomfortable  reference  to  the  EngHsh  troops.  On  the  final 
settlement  France  let  England  have  her  way,  as  usual. 

There  is  a  diversity  of  opinion  as  to  the  Philippines.  Senator 
Hoar  denies  our  right  to  hold  them  under  the  Constitution,  but 
that  elastic  instrument  may  permit  us  to  annex  the  world,  in  time, 
when  we  are  strong  enough.  The  United  States  has  revoked 
treaties  with  China  and  Indians  and  Latin  American  states,  but 
never  with  a  country  strong  enough  to  object. 

And  the  grab  desire  grows  with  success,  but  occasionally  is  re- 
buked. There  was  a  Norman  invasion  of  the  Byzantine  empire 
which,  in  1085,  failed.  Charlemagne  was  something  of  a  grab- 
ber of  territory  extending  from  the  North*  Sea  to  the  Alediter- 
ranean,  but  like  many  another  testator  he  failed  to  keep  the  prop- 
erty in  the  family,  though  desirous  of  doing  so.  When  Duke 
Charles  the  Bold  was  slain  by  the  Swiss,  in  1477,  Louis  XI  of 
France  eagerly  grabbed  Burgundy.  In  the  Roman  conquest  of 
Italy  an  agrarian  law  enacted  that  no  citizen  should  own  more 
than  five  hundred  acres  of  land,  but  this  attempt  to  limit  the 
human  grab  instinct  failed  through  violations  of  the  law  by  the 
rich.  Gracchus  supported  the  law  but  an  avaricious  senate  de- 
stroyed him.  Similarly  the  homestead  and  pre-emption  laws  of 
America  are  subverted  by  capital,  and  the  best  endeavors  to  ben- 
efit the  poor  are  foiled  by  the  persons  the  law  seeks  to  benefit 
playing  into  the  hands  of  the  unscrupulous.  Absenteeism  in  Ire- 
land is  another  item  of  oppression.  The  lands  being  grabbed  by 
nobility,  the  owners  of  about  half  of  the  land  do  not  live  on  or  near 
their  estates,  while  a  fourth  do  not  live  in  the  country  at  all,  the 
people  regard  it  as  a  grievance  and  think  that  twenty-five  to  thirty 
million  dollars  paid  to  these  landlords  is  a  tax  grievous  to  be 
borne,®  particularly  when  no  repairs  are  made  and  the  tenants 
are  regarded  as  merely  profitable  cattle. 

Chivalrous  deeds  are  nowadays  presumed  to  have  a  touch  of 
high  minded  unselfishness  about  them,  the  doing  good  to  others 
without  reference  to  self-interest,  but  chivalry  came  from  cavalry 
and  the  assumption  that  one  on  horseback  was  better  than  one 
who  walked.     Cavalier,  caballero,  synonymous  with  gentleman, 

'D.  B.  King,  The  Irish  Question,  p.  5-11. 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  367 

implies  tliat  tlie  foot  man  is  no  gentleman,  so  honor  is  grabbed  by 
the  one  strong  enough  to  own  a  horse. 

Spanish  hidalgos  grabbed  the  very  vitals  of  Cuba  and  the  re- 
concentrado  was  ending  the  remnant  of  the  people.  Shafter  and 
Sampson  grabbed  positions  that  should  have  been  filled  by  civil 
service  military,  instead  of  by  spoils  system  politicians,  because 
bureaucrats  conspired  to  grab  the  places  for  them,  but  General 
Miles  and  Commodores  Schley  and  Dewey  ended  the  Spanish 
army  and  navy  in  spite  of  Secretary  Long,  Sampson,  Shafter  and 
the  Spaniards. 

In  benighted  periods  the  inventor  was  liable  to  the  charge  of 
sorcery  and  was  burned  alive  for  daring  to  do  anything  for  his 
fellow  men,  but  nowadays  he  is  merely  robbed  and  only  killed  if 
disagreeably  persistent  about  asking  for  royalties.  The  publisher 
or  manufacturers  charge  an  extra  price  on  books  and  instruments 
to  cover  the  author  or  inventor  royalty  percentage,  but  which  the 
author  or  inventor  rarely  hears  from.  So  under  the  lying  plea 
of  rewarding  study  and  talent  the  public  is  robbed  as  well  as  the 
student  and  creator  of  materials  sold. 

It  is  a  common  trick  of  some  manufacturers  to  induce  special 
ability  to  confide  some  secret  process  to  them  and  then  appropriate 
it  without  recompense  and  retaliate  with  abuse  of  the  inventor  if 
he  is  at  all  resentful  about  being  robbed.  It  is  exactly  the  same 
kind  of  cruelty  that  leads  the  highwayman  to  brutally  beat  a  help- 
less victim. 

A  chemist  named  E.  B.  Stuart  has  been  repeatedly  swindled 
out  of  the  proceeds  of  his  numerous  valuable  inventions  in  glu- 
cose and  other  processes,  and  even  out  of  the  processes  them- 
selves. Finally  he  was  employed  in  an  official  capacity  to  make 
chemical  and  microscopical  tests  and  lost  his  place  because  too 
honest  to  accept  bribes  from  food  adulterators.  But  Professor 
Stuart,  in  considering  the  intellectual  degradation  of  the  average 
successful  politician  or  dishonest  business  man,  remarked  that  he 
was  very  glad  that  he  was  not  capable  of  becoming  rich. 

The  populace  have  a  vague  idea  that  great  enterprises  advance 
mechanical  and  other  improvements  bearing  upon  their  interests ; 
this  is  only  true  to  the  extent  of  what  the  limited  intelligence  of 
those  in  control  recognize  as  furthering  their  immediate  interests. 


368  THE    EVOLUTION    OE    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Seeing  ahead  very  far  is  too  great  an  effort  for  them  as  a  rule. 
So  corporations,  such  as  telegraph  and  telephone,  have  obtained 
control  of  improvements  in  message  conveying,  electric  light  com- 
panies in  illuminating  facilities,  coal  oil  companies  in  refining 
and  utilizing  processes,  and  some  of-  the  inventions  are  of  value, 
but  the  idea  of  benefiting  the  multitude  is  a  mere  accidental  out- 
come of  any  calculation  of  the  monopoly,  a  mere  incident  and 
never  an  object,  so  very  often  these  improvements  are  shelved  and 
forgotten  because  the  expense  of  their  installation  would  cut 
down  dividends  temporarily,  even  though  both  company  and  pub- 
lic would  profit  finally  by  their  adoption.  Czars,  kings  and  cor- 
porations are  alike  in  such  matters.  Nero  only  ordered  free  baths 
to  be  constructed  because  his  royal  nostrils  were  offended  by  the 
bad  smell  of  his  subjects. 

Marconi  experimented  with  wireless  telegraphy  across  the  At- 
lantic and  was  served  with  an  injunction  by  the  transatlantic  cable 
company.  Thus  organized  selfishness  tries  to  stop  the  world's 
progress.  Business  instinct  asks  if  this  or  that  advance  may  not 
hurt  my  vested  interests,  and  if  so  can  it  not  be  suppressed  ? 

A  harvester  manufacturing  company's  president  offered  an 
inventor  $500  for  an  improved  binding  process,  but  was  laughed 
at^  for,  said  the  inventor,  "millions  of  dollars  can  be  made  from 
it."  The  president  replied,  "I  pay  a  lawyer  $10,000  a  year  to 
fight  inventors,  and  I  will  use  your  patent  anyway,  whether  I  buy 
it  or  not."  The  vestibule  addition  to  car  platforms  was  openly 
appropriated  by  a  great  car  builder  and  litigation  was  necessary 
to  secure  compensation.  A  new  town  was  projected  by  the  same 
capitalist,  who  advertised  that  he  would  pay  well  for  the  best 
process  of  brick  making.  When  those  who  responded  described 
their  methods  the  wealthy  town  builder  had  a  stenographer  be- 
hind a  screen  take  down  the  details.  He  put  together  all  the  best 
ideas  confided  to  him  and  made  his  own  brick  and  gave  nothing 
in  return  for  the  advice. 

William  A.  Brickell,  a  fireman  of  New  York,  invented  and 
perfected  a  process  whereby  the  hitching  of  horses  to  the  fire  en- 
gine automatically  detaches  parts,  a  fire  is  lighted  in  the  grate  and 
before  the  engine  gets  a  hundred  yards  from  the  house  there  is  a 
full  head  of  steam  on.    This  has  resulted  in  the  prompt  saving  of 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  369 

thousands  of  lives  and  has  kept  millions  of  property  from  the 
flames,  but  Brickell's  invention  was  used  without  compensation 
and  he  died  poor  after  twenty  years'  legal  endeavor  to  have  his 
patents  respected. 

A  reservoir  bursts  loose  in  the  mountains  and  a  valley  town 
is  swept  away,  with  many  persons  drowned.  The  survivors  are 
sent  money,  clothing  and  food  in  reckless  abundance.  The  com- 
mittee selected  or  self-appointed  to  distribute  these  gifts  exhibits 
personal  wealth  soon  after.  After  the  great  Chicago  fire  of  1871 
several  million  dollars  was  contributed  from  all  over  the  world, 
and  some  of  those  to  whom  the  money  was  sent  are  now  multi- 
millionaires, when  previously  they  were  in  moderate  and  even 
humble  conditions  of  life.  But  a  hint  of  this  to  relations  and 
friends  of  the  wealthy  "philanthropists"  will  produce  art  angry 
frown. 

Spencer  speaks  of  unexpected  results  of  apparently  beneficent 
movements.  Nothing  should  be  simpler  than  that  charities  should 
be  organized  and  beggars  referred  to  the  central  office  for  inves- 
tigation of  their  claims  and  worthiness,  so  all  charity  funds  should 
be  entrusted  by  the  charitable  to  officers  and  not  to  the  beggars. 
Tlie  result  is  a  few  office-holders  thrive  on  salaries  which  must 
be  paid,  and  the  salaries  increase  in  amount  and  numbers  with 
the  sums  received,  and  very  little  is  left  over  for  the  needy. 

Animals  and  plants  constructed  of  many  cells  working  in  har- 
m.ony  for  the  general  good  of  the  colony  of  cells  that  form  the 
individual  are  very  much  like  the  social  organism  constructed  of 
men,  women  and  children.  Each  cell  labors  in  its  own  interest, 
its  nature  does  not  permit  it  to  care  anything  about  its  neighbor 
cell,  and  if  anything  one  cell  may  do  happens  to  benefit  another 
cell,  or  part  of  the  body,  it  is  not  intended,  and  so  the  individuals 
of  a  nation  w^hile  working  for  themselves  alone  may  under  or- 
ganization assist  one  another  unintentionally,  until  finally  the 
helping  one  another,  whether  as  cells  or  persons,  becomes  inevi- 
table as  a  condition  of  their  lives.  They  would  not  do  it  if  they 
could  help  not  doing  so,  and  at  least  they  seek  recompense  for 
any  extra  service  to  one  another  over  and  above  the  enforced  mu- 
tuality. 

Acquisitiveness  is  merely  the  grab  desire  inherent  in  every 


370  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

tissue  of  an  individual,  in  every  molecule  and  every  atom  that 
cannot  exist  apart,  and  must  associate  itself  with  another  atom, 
either  of  its  own  kind  or  some  other  kind  of  elements,  so  that 
a  single  centre  in  the  brain  for  this  faculty  is  not  possible.  All 
desires  of  whatsoever  kind  are  based  upon  the  grabbing  propensi- 
ties. As  desires  differ  also  and  develop,  one  individual  wanting 
social  or  other  distinction,  another  money,  another  food  in  the 
main,  so  covetousness  must  engage  many  parts  of  the  brain.  The 
good-natured  hotel-keeper  deficient  in  grasp  is  often  so  imposed 
upon  as  to  be  bankrupted,  and  those  who  have  roomy  mansions 
are  beset  with  self-invited  parasites,  and  they  realize  the  truth 
of  the  verse  "Riches  multiply  those  who  devour  them."  Even 
ordinary  visits  may  become  visitations,  and  a  good-sized  portion 
of  every  community  scuttles  around  in  search  of  cover  to  be  won 
by  flattery,  subserviency  or  harsher  means.  The  hermit  crab 
crawls  into  any  old  shell  or  empty  hole,  and  has  been  seen  in 
toy  pitchers  or  other  cast-off  materials  affording  shelter.  A 
naturalist  observed  one  insinuate  himself  backwards  into  a  large 
empty  conch  shell  and  suddenly  give  a  start  and  hurriedly  run 
out  to  turn  around  and  re-enter,  head  and  claws  foremost,  back- 
ing out  with  a  smaller  crab  which  it  contemptuously  cast  away 
and  then  settled  down  to  complacent  possession.  Many  a  human 
parasite  has  acted  much  the  same  when  affronted  by  some  sharer 
of  the  hovel  or  palace,  cave  or  tree,  and  even  island  or  continent, 
if  strong  enough  to  dispute  possession. 

A  physician  steadily  resisted  the  business  advice  to  introduce 
some  attractive  humbuggery  into  his  sanitarium,  such  as  dosing 
spring  water  with  salt  and  advertising  its  wonderful  curative 
properties.  Depending  upon  skill  and  learning,  and  while  neg- 
lecting business  details  and  devoting  himself  wholly  to  intelligent 
care  of  patients  he  could  brook  no  dishonesty  in  his  dealings  with 
them,  so  the  delighted  public  swindled  him  by  living  upon  his 
overcultivated  sympathies  and  failing  to  pay  for  board. 

About  1877  the  Minnesota  legislature  offered  a  bounty  of  one 
dollar  a  bushel  for  grasshoppers  because  there  was  a  plague  of 
them  and  famine  vv^as  threatened  through  their  destruction  of 
crops.  A  Methodist  preacher  worked  all  one  Sunday  capturing 
grasshoppers  and  chased  people  from  his  farm  with  threats  to 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  371 

anyone  who  would  steal  his  grasshoppers.  This  can  be  taken  as 
an  instance  of  the  consistency  of  those  who  pretend  to  teach  what 
will  result  in  the  spiritual  and  bodily  welfare  of  others.  That 
minister  could  prate  of  helping  communities  and  individuals,  but 
when  money  was  to  be  made  by  ridding  the  country  of  grasshop- 
pers did  not  want  anyone  to  steal  his  grasshoppers. 

In  England  merchants,  hotelkeepers  and  others  use  the  guinea, 
as  it  is  a  shilling  more  than  a  pound,  and  enables  extortion  from 
those  who  confuse  the  guinea  and  the  pound. 

When  a  child  is  sent  to  the  grocer  or  butcher  for  a  purchase 
the  average  dealer  tries  to  cheat  the  little  one,  gives  it  what  it  did 
not  come  for  or  makes  false  change.  When  servants  take  little 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  a  household  tradesmen  give  short  weight 
and  make  false  entries.  Tea,  coffee,  sugar,  coal,  etc.,  afford  the 
most  convenient  materials  for  swindling  by  means  of  overcharg- 
ing and  underweighing ;  frequently  goods  never  delivered  are 
charged  and  paid  for.  When  dealers  make  Christmas  presents 
to  servants  the  master  of  the  house  is  the  one  who  has  paid  for 
them  without  knowing  it.  Bearing  on  habit  and  instinct  the 
grabbing  propensity  may  be  so  ingrained  that  there  are  actually 
persons  who  would  prefer  to  make  a  dollar  dishonestly  than  ten 
dollars  honestly.  This  is  the  gambler's  instinct  and  a  form  of 
love  of  excitement.  Board  of  trade  dealers,  bucket  shop  and  clock 
game  men,  stock  jobbers,  and  the  multitude  of  speculators,  many 
of  whom  are  refined,  gentlemanly  cut-throats,  are  of  this  class. 

Wheat  pits,  railroad  and  steamship  companies,  and  other  vast 
corporations  fight  tooth  and  nail  for  personal  gain  and  yet  serve 
unconsciously  the  mighty  world  purpose  of  feeding  London  and 
other  great  cities,  or  large  areas  of  population  elsewhere,  from 
the  surplus  of  western  fields  of  grain.  Intestinal  cells  may  simi- 
larly try  to  eat  up  everything,  but  the  bulk  of  material  goes  else- 
where in  the  body  for  consumption. 

People  who  are  quite  honest  ordinarily,  and  in  their  commer- 
cial dealings  as  "honesty"  goes,  may  not  hesitate  at  a  literary  . 
theft,  at  keeping  a  friend's  book  forever  or  permanently  borrow- 
ing an  umbrella.     One  may  also  be  quite  punctiliously  honest 
in  little  things,  but  steal  a  railroad  deliberately  and  designedly. 

On  the  first  of  an  April  day  an  elevator  man  of  a  large  office 


372  THE     EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

V 

building  put  a  pocketbook  on  the  floor  of  his  cage  and  during  the 
day  twenty  who  noticed  the  book  tried  to  secretly  take  it,  while 
only  four  others  called  his  attention  to  it,  the  others  had  not  seen 
it,  and  these  crowds  represent  a  large  class  who  lose  opportunities 
for  gain,  however  disposed  to  be  honest  or  dishonest. 

A  fashionable  money-making  practitioner  told  me  that  he 
would  rather  have  a  patient  die  on  his  hands  than  to  call  in  a 
consultant  who  might  save  the  patient's  life.  That  is  the  business 
instinct  occasionally  in  medical  practice.  Business  enterprise  in 
professional  matters  sometimes  goes  to  greater  lengths.  A  quack 
who  was  a  president  of  a  ''school  of  osteopathy,"  a  humbug  trav- 
esty of  massage,  claimed  that  he  bought  dead  bodies  from  the 
attendants  of  an  insane  asylum  for  $30  each,  and  he  was  told 
that  he  could  pick  out  his  subjects  ''on  the  hoof"  from  dements 
in  the  "killer  ward."  Now  this  sounds  preposterous,  but  "hold 
up"  men  will  murder  for  a  dollar,  and  these  identical  thugs  have 
often  been  given  attendants'  places  in  asylums.  If  willing  to  mur- 
der for  one  dollar  would  they  hesitate  for  thirty? 

An  estimate  of  the  costs  of  births  in  large  cities  was  placed 
at  $23,  marriages  $76.50  and  deaths  $170.  The  cause  of  this  is 
that  happiness  is  taken  advantage  of  as  being  likely  to  be  gen- 
erous, just  as  the  cabman  wants  to  overcharge  for  wedding  trips, 
but  when  grief  causes  indifference  to  expense  a  better  chance  for 
charging  is  secured. 

Graveyards  are  incorporated  "forever,"  and  when  the  dead 
are  forgotten  the  graveyard  is  cut  up  into  building  lots  and  sold. 
One  or  two  wealthy  tomb-holders  maintained  their  rights, 
through  the  supreme  court  of  appeals,  to  their  property  in  the 
cemetery  which  afterwards  became  Lincoln  Park  in  Chicago,  but 
all  other  graves  were  destroyed.  Often  money  is  taken  by  sex- 
tons to  keep  graves  in  repair,  and  lies  are  told  when  their  neglect' 
is  discovered. 

The  extremely  wealthy  may  combine  in  a  trust  to  rob  the  poor 
and  end  by  robbing  each  other,  though  many  trusts  accidentally 
and  unintentionally  benefit  the  people  as  a  result  of  but  not  as  an 
intention  of  the  combination. 

When  yellow  fever  came  to  Louisiana  commercialism  tried  to 
hide  its  nature  by  giving  it  false  names,  as  Bayou  fever,  malaria, 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  373 

etc.  In,  1630  the  same  thing  was  done  in  Lombardy.  In  New 
Orleans  Dr.  Holt  was  denounced  by  press  and  pulpits  for  his  ef- 
forts to  suppress  the  epidemic  owing  to  the  interference  with 
profits  of  the  merchants.  In  1884  I  appealed  to  Chicago  mer- 
chants to  assist  in  preventing  political  abuses  and  robbery  of  the 
insane  at  the  county  asylum,  and  discovered  that  merchants  sold 
inferior  goods  at  high  prices  to  the  commissioners  and  divided 
the  profits  of  starvation  and  other  neglect  and  brutality  of  the 
helpless  inmates. 

The  Illinois  Central  Railroad  was  permitted  to  occupy  ten 
miles  of  the  lake  front  in  Chicago  with  tracks.  In  fifty  years  the 
extensions  of  the  company  towards  the  city  and  by  making  new 
ground  from  the  lake  would  approximate  in  value  five  hundred 
million  dollars  in  value,  and  it  required  the  incessant  opposition 
of  a  committee  of  property  owners  and  the  instruction  of  twenty 
years  or  more  of  editorial  comments,  with  occasional  injunctions, 
to  limit  this  gigantic  grab  tO'  its  final  dimensions.  A  piece  of  land 
also  adjoining  the  lake  front  was  given  to  the  state  by  the  general 
government  and  the  rats,  ferrets  and  snakes  of  common  councils, 
art  societies,  legislatures,  confidence  combinations  did  all  they 
could  to  get  this  property  from  the  people  by  all  kinds  of  pre- 
texts, and  the  tricksters  are  gradually  succeeding. 

A  street  called  Dix,  adjoining  the  Chicago  and  Northwestern 
depot,  gradually  became  more  and  more  slender  between  rows 
added  to  rows  of  railway  tracks  until  the  street  vanished  from 
the  surface  of  the  earth,  as  hundreds  of  other  streets  in  Chicago 
and  thousands  elsewhere  where  rich  corporations  such  as  railways 
needed  them,  have  gone. 

The  trail  of  a  grabber  may  lead  into  several  directions.  What 
was  known  as  the  "forty  thieves'  legislature"  of  Wisconsin  had 
an  agent,  a  clerk  of  the  house  of  representatives,  who  was  in- 
trusted with  forty  thousand  dollars  to  be  divided  among  the 
•"solons"  to  enable  a  corporation  measure  to  be  passed,  the  clerk 
divided  five  thousand  and  kept  thirty-five  thousand,  moving  to 
Dakota  he  corrupted  the  United  States  Survey  Service  and  sug- 
gested a  gas  company  to  be  formed  by  a  lot  of  small  stockholders 
who  were  to  be  gradually  frozen  out;  that  is,  they  were  to  be 
so  discouraged  by  fraudulent  management  that  they  would  sell 


374  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

their  stock  for  trifling  sums.  A  similar  stock  company  was 
formed  in  a  great  city  which  grew  rapidly  with  the  relatively 
small  capital  of  $100,000.  In  twenty  years  the  stock  and  prop- 
erty valuation  of  the  gas  plant  was  eighty  million  dollars,  made 
by  swindling  the  public  in  many  ways,  and  the  ownership  by  this 
freezing  out  process  centered  among  a  few  with  criminal  instincts, 
one  of  whom  spends  his  time  with  gamblers  and  lewd  company. 
He  knows  no  more  satisfactory  means  of  recreation.  By  false 
meters  and  registering  of  the  gas  consumed  the  ordinary  tenant 
is  robbed  annually  of  from  $25  to  $200  or  more,  and  in  a  city  with 
a  hundred  thousand  consumers  the  aggregate  would  make  baron- 
ial feudal  tribute  small  indeed.  And  practically  this  unjust 
monthly  assessment  is  slavery,  feudalism,  brigandage  or  what- 
soever the  politer  equivalent  for  picking  pockets  may  be. 

The  reigning  Tartar  grabbers  of  Manchuria  pocketed  China 
in  ancient  day^,  but  the  modern  empress  dowager  grabbed  the 
throne  because  the  young  emperor  was  too  progressive  and  really 
wanted  his  people  to  be  better  off;  this  desire  of  the  emperor 
to  help  the  people  was  shocking  to  the  grabbing  courtiers,  who 
laugh  at  the  idea  of  benefiting  any  one  but  yourself.  The  em- 
peror wanted  to  stop  opium  eating  and  divert  the  incomes  of  the 
temples  to  schools.  He  further  wanted  to  liberate  Korea.  In 
1898  he  prohibited  the  appointment  of  bigoted  conservatives  who 
adhere  to  obsolete  and  unpractical  customs,  and  instituted  scien- 
tific studies  in  civil  service  reform  examinations.  Sweeping  gen- 
eral reforms  were  commanded.  Dismissed  officials  appealed  to 
the  ignorant  conservative  old  dowager  empress,  who  disposed  of 
the  radical  and  took  the  government  upon  herself.  In  1895  mis- 
sionaries were  murdered  by  Chinese  at  Hua  Sang,  and  in  1897 
reparation  was  demanded  by  Germany  for  missionaries  who  were 
murdered  in  that  year,  so  to  pacify  the  Kaiser  part  of  Kiaochau 
was  ''leased"  for  99  years  to  Germany. 

Then  foreign  demands  increased  by  1898  and  concession  grab- 
bing increased  to  satisfy  the  British,  French,  Russian,  German 
and  Belgian  governments,  ,who  took  advantage  of  the  whipping 
Japan  had  just  given  to  China.  In  1901  the  "Boxer"  opposition 
to  the  foreigners  broke  out,  and  under  a  pretext  of  a  revolution 
the  empress  directed  the  legations  to  be  destroyed,  but  by  August 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  375 

Pekin  was  captured  by  the  allies,  who,  with  the  exception  of 
American,  British  and  Japanese  troops,  were  quite  brutal  to  their 
captives.  There  was  great  international  jealousy  and  looting, 
and  finally  the  terms  of  conquests  were  arranged  and  a  large  in- 
demnity demanded  to  cover  the  expenses  of  the  war.  Thus  poor 
old  China  thought  it  owned  heaven  and  earth,  and  its  ignorant 
rulers  grabbed  all  the  rights  away  from  its  subjects  and  foreign 
grabbers  completed  the  game.  So  China  will  learn  and  will 
progress  through  compulsion.  The  nations  want  China  to  buy 
cannons  and  ammunition,  and  thus  the  world  is  forced  to  move 
whether  it  wants  to  do  so  or  not,  because  the  grab  differentiation 
commands  the  conservatives  to  die  or  move  on,  and  thus  selfish- 
ness is  a  factor  in  progress,  and  the  main  one. 

The  nations  demanded  indemnities  so  large  they  were  beyond 
possibility  of  payment.  Even  Italy  came  in  with  an  extravagant 
claim.  But  when  it  comes  to  looting,  officials  can  be  very  im- 
partial between  taking  from  foreigners  or  from  their  own  coun- 
trymen. The  great  surplus  occasioned  by  the  war  tax  collec- 
tions that  were  unused  in  the  United  States  Treasury  in  1902 
tempted  the  congressmen  to  return  the  fund  to  the  people  in  such 
a  way  as  would  best  conduce  to  their  re-election  to  congress,. by 
giving  public  improvements  where  they  would  ''do  the  most  good" 
to  politicians. 

Guttenberg  and  Coster  were  driven  through  Germany  as  sor- 
cerers and  wrenched  the  art  of  printing  from  poverty  and  misery. 
Palissy,  the  pauper  potter,  burned  his  last  stick  of  furniture  to 
finish  his  secret  of  enameling.  The  stocking  knitter  was  invented 
by  poverty-stricken  Lee.  James  Gordon  worked  many  years  to 
invent  his  grain  reaper  amidst  opposition,  sneers,  slander,  priva- 
tion and  anxiety,  and  finally  a  rich  company  appropriated  it,  but 
his  long  fight  ended  in  a  decision  in  his  favor.  The  original  in- 
ventor of  lacing-hooks  on  shoes  confided  in  a  friend  who  at  once 
secured  patents  and  wealth,  and  the  real  inventor  got  nothing. 
The  inventor  of  interlocking  horns  with  balls  at  the  ends  for 
snapping  closed  pocketbooks  and  gloves  received  a  kidney  stew 
dinner  and  fifty  cents  from  the  man  who  made  a  handsome  for- 
tune out  of  the  profits.  A  patent  on  a  bottle-stopper  was  bought 
for  a  thousand  dollars  and  subsequently  independently  of    any 


376  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

agreement  thirty  thousand  was  voluntarily  given  to  the  inventor 
by  the  purchaser  who  made  five  million  dollars  from  the  inven- 
tion. Were  inventors  always  treated  as  fairly  as  this  there  could 
be  little  complaint,  but  this  act  of  generosity  is  exceptional  in 
such  cases. 

Patenting  an  invention  is  no  assurance  of  protection  in  all 
cases;  inventors  of  small  articles  know  their  ideas  will  be  stolen 
anyway,  and  so  they  rush  out  as  many  articles  as  possible  to  fill 
the  market  before  infringing  imitators  acquire  the  bulk  of  the 
trade.  Some  big  "inventor's"  agents  examine  caveats  and  new 
patents  to  enable  them  to  appropriate  all  new  ideas  possible  with- 
out recompense. 

The  Panama  canal  scheme  resulted  in  the  French  stockholders 
being  robbed  of  all  they  had  invested.  Great  lies  were  spread 
as  to  the  fortunes  to  be  made  by  investors,  and  the  company  lux- 
uriated in  a  drunken  frenzy  of  wealth  on  both  sides  of  the  At- 
lantic ;  the  management  was  so  corrupt  and  careless  that  machin- 
ery and  stores  of  the  corporation  were  allowed  to  be  lost  and 
destroyed  without  efforts  being  made  to  save  them.  Locomo- 
tives worth  five  thousand  dollars  would  fall  off  the  tracks,  and 
instead  of  being  replaced  would  be  buried  under  hills  of  dirt. 
Every  conceivable  rascality  was  practiced  in  the  pretense  of  this 
canal  construction  and  finally  the  end  came  with  much  hysterics 
and  attempts  at  revenge.  Poor  de  Lesseps,  who  had  successfully 
engineered  the  Suez  canal,  was  engaged  in  the  new  affair  merely 
as  a  figure-head  by  the  schemers,  who  took  advantage  of  his  se- 
nility to  impose  upon  him  and  the  public  they  robbed,  and  it  is 
surmised  that  the  French  owners  of  the  ruins  of  the  Panama 
canal  have  made  great  efforts  to  interest  the  United  States  Con- 
gress by  means  similar  to  those  used  in  Pacific  Mail  days. 

O.  W.  Holmes,  in  his  "Autocrat,"  remarks : 

"When  publishers  no  longer  steal, 

And  pay  for  what  they  stole  before, 

^       :js        H:        *        Hs        5k        5k 

And  when  you  see  that  blessed  day 
Then  order  your  ascension  robe." 

Bovee  suggests  that  "there  is  probably  no  hell  for  authors  in 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  377 

the  next  world,  as  they  suffer  so  much  from  critics  and  pubHsh- 
ers  in  this." 

In  the  preface  to  the  famous  "Collegians"  it  is  told  of  Griffin 
that  he  was  robbed  and  abused  by  publishers  and  editors,  and 
both  he  and  Payne,  the  author  of  "Home,  Sweet  Home,"  were 
swindled  by  theatrical  managers. 

Max  Miiller  pursued  his  studies  for  many  years  unknown  and 
unappreciated,  and  when  his  Rig  Veda  edition  was  about  to  ap- 
pear rich  toadies  wanted  to  share  honors  with  him  and  pirates 
tried  to  steal  from  him. 

The  usual  arrangement  between  publisher  and  author  is  a  very 
silly  one ;  worse  than  that,  in  view  of  human  nature  it  is  an  im- 
becile one.  The  publisher  keeps  all  accounts  and  the  author  has 
to  depend  upon  the  "honesty"  of  the  publisher  who  is  tempted  to 
the  furthest  limit,  as  he  may  keep  two  sets  of  books  to  cheat  au- 
thors who  force  him  into  court  or  he  may  risk  the  authors'  ever 
trying  to  gain  an  accounting  by  law,  depending  upon  their  pov- 
erty and  ability  to  be  bluffed. 

An  old  civil  engineer  who  had  written  a  cyclopedia  sold  some 
of  his  books,  and  his  publisher  put  him  in  jail  for  the  theft  of 
the  books,  as  the  author  claimed  the  amount  appropriated  was 
due  him  on  royalties  unpaid.  Another  author  deposited  six  hun- 
dred dollars  with  the  same  publisher  for  expenses  in  printing  a 
mathematical  work.  In  thirty  years  the  author  barely  recovered 
back  his  guaranty  in  royalties,  while  the  publisher  acknowledged 
to  $3,000  profit,  and  how  much  more  had  really  been  collected  will 
never  be  known  except  to  the  publisher. 

In  this  case  the  author  paid  all  the  expenses  and  got  nothing 
but  glory,  and  the  publisher  got  all  the  profit. 

An  author  may  have  devoted  his  life  to  advocate  certain  prin- 
ciples and  made  use  of  his  literary  abilities  as  a  mere  means  of 
presenting  these  principles.  The  commercial  spirit  of  the  pub- 
lisher sometimes  studies  the  manuscript  with  a  sole  regard  to 
getting  money  through  its  means,  and  ruthlessly  expurgates  and 
amends  until  the  principle  is  mutilated  beyond  recognition,  and 
the  sage  appears  in  "cap  and  bells,"  for  the  publisher  realizes 
that  "while  the  world  admires  the  philosopher  it  will  throw  its 
pennies  in  the  monkey's  cap." 


378  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Thackeray's  ''Yellow  Plush  Papers"  were  revised  by  the  ed- 
itor of  the  Edinburgh  Review  beyond  recognition  in  parts  and 
Carlyle  had  to  submit  to  Francis  Jeffrey's  dashing  out  and  cut- 
ting out  and  writings  in,  and  finally  got  to  refusing  Carlyle's 
writings  altogether  as  not  good  enough  for  the  Review.  Dr. 
Billings  of  Sharon,  Mass.,  paid  a  publisher  of  a  semi-religious 
periodical  to  bring  out  a  book.  The  publisher  accepted  the  money, 
printed  the  book,  and  from  religious  motives  did  all  he  could  to 
kill  its  sales.  His  religion  admitted  of  defrauding  an  author  un- 
der false  pretenses. 

Some  publishers  combined  to  have  a  bill  passed  in  the  New 
York  legislature  requiring  the  use  of  larger  types  in  printing 
books,  and  testimony  was  taken  to  show  the  effects  of  smaller 
type  upon  the  eye.  This  pretext  of  consideration  for  the  public 
was  in  the  interests  of  publishers  who  wanted  to  prevent  cheap 
editions  of  fine  print  popular  books.  Thus  the  people  would  be 
forced  to  pay  higher  prices  under  the  trickery  of  regard  for  their 
eyesight  preservation. 

A  Philadelphia  medical  book  publisher  has  been  not  only 
thievish  with  his  authors,  but  also  with  his  book  agents,  some- 
times giving  them  nothing  for  a  year's  canvassing.  His  stock 
in  trade  includes  going  into  legal  bankruptcy  and  bluffing  all  his 
victims  with  threats.  He  is  extremely  polite  until  his  knavery 
is  discovered,  and  then  he  adopts  the  usual  animal  tactics.  When 
the  fox  is  cornered  he  shows  his  teeth. 

A  favorite  method  of  robbing  authors  incidentally  robs  broth- 
er publishers,  a  work  that  has  become  popular  is  stolen  outright 
from  a  foreign  publisher  and  author  and  reproduced  without 
compensation  to  the  real  or  ostensible  owners.  The  method  of 
reprinting  English  works  in  Germany  for  a  small  cost  and  selling 
them  in  English-speaking  countries  has  been  successful  in  spite 
of  copyright  laws  which  afford  little  protection  at  best. 

Faust  and  Gutenberg  are  often  spoken  of  as  the  inventors  of 
movable  types.  The  facts  are  Faust  was  a  money-lender  and 
let  Gutenberg  have  money  to  carry  on  his  experiments,  and  in 
1455  Faust  foreclosed  on  all  Gutenberg  possessed  just  as  the  first 
work  was  being  turned  out  from  the  presses.  Gutenberg  had 
been  intent  upon  the  invention  while  Faust  looked  out  wholly  for 


ACQUISITIVENESS.  379 

his  personal  interests,  unscrupulous  as  to  whom  he  wrecked  or 
how  his  money  was  obtained.  Years  of  labor  can  be  converted 
remorselessly  by  commercial  bandits,  many  of  whom  are  high 
in  the  world's  esteem  and  enjoy  wealth  from  plunder  of  the  poor 
and  honest,  who  in  some  cases  were  driven  to  paupers'  graves. 

Goodyear,  the  vulcanizer  of  India  rubber,  had  much  litigation 
to  establish  his  rights,  though  it  is  not  the  rule  for  inventors  to 
succeed  financially.  It  is  rare  to  find  business  ability  with  invent- 
ive genius.  The  single  hearted  worker  in  any  field  is  too  much 
absorbed  to  be  able  to  realize  the  gathering  of  parasites  and  pred- 
atory animals  watching  him  for  the  first  signs  of  success  on  his 
part.  Metaphorical  fangs,  claws,  beaks,  descend  upon  what  he 
has  uncovered,  and  he  is  lucky  if  even  his  reputation  is  left. 

Professional  men  are  notoriously  poor  business  men,  and  no 
one  knows  this  so  well  as  the  business  sharper  who  takes  advan- 
tage of  it.  The  cause  is  simple,  no  one  can  develop  in  several 
directions  at  once.  The  money  shark  is  a  specialist.  The  physi- 
cian too  often  is  so  deep  in  his  studies,  so  wholly  wrapped  up  in 
the  welfare  of  his  patients,  that  with  returning  health  they  find 
the  doctor  pays  little  attention  to  his  recompense,  and  so  they 
naturally  try  to  forget  it  themselves,  and  often  succeed.  It  re- 
quires a  high  type  of  intellect  to  appreciate  a  physician's  services. 

To  prevent  a  famous  cathedral  from  being  reproduced  by  its 
inventor  his  eyes  were  put  out,  in  times  when  such  cruelties  were 
more  common,  but  this  desire  to  prevent  what  is  secured  from 
becoming  so  common  that  too  many  enjoy  it  is  seen  today  in  ex- 
clusive books  at  great  expense  being  sold  to  the  few,  and  the 
plates  being  destroyed  to  prevent  other  copies  from  being  printed. 
Grand  churches  and  other  ''public"  buildings  are  empty  six  days 
in  the  week,  while  the  poor  are  without  shelter. 

Scullions  of  the  wealthy  destroy  and  throw  away  enough  to 
feed  all  the  famished  in  the  city,  indications  of  the  animal  selfish- 
ness and  carelessness  of  even  intelligent  people,  and  of  course 
with  reverse  positions  the  poor  made  rich  would  do  the  same  with 
the  rich  who  were  made  poor.  It  is  simply  inherited  common 
animal  human  nature.  What  w^e  grab  is  our  own,  no  matter  how 
we  get  it,  or  who  needs  it  more  than  we  do. 

There  is  a  disposition  of  the  successful  "to  pull  the  ladder 


380  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Up"  by  which  they  have  cHmbed.  Professors  and  merchants,  mil- 
itary and  navy  aUke  have  this  feeHng.  The  monkey  in  the  cocoa- 
nut  tree  growls  at  intruders. 

The  real  conflict  of  capitalists  is  not  against  the  poor  directly, 
tut  between  themselves,  and  F.  S.  Billings  holds  that  the  "dog- 
eat-dog"  combat  between  them  is  as  fierce  as  it  is  between  the 
wage-earners  for  bread.  Mere  differentiations  of  the  game  of 
grab. 

It  is  fortunate  for  the  poor  that  the  rich  do  grab  from  each 
other,  for  otherwise  the  common  people  would  be  hungry  and 
naked  always.  In  the  evolution  of  the  grab  instinct  the  combi- 
nations for  trade  purposes  seek  profit  to  themselves.  It  is  folly 
to  suppose  they  organize  to  help  their  fellow-beings.  The  robber 
monstrosity,  the  Standard  Oil  trust  for  example,  is  not  philan- 
thropic, but  many  of  these  combinations  finally  accidentally 
cheapen  products  against  their  will ;  they  would  raise  the  price  of 
everything  handled  if  possible,  but  fear  of  competition  among 
other  things  compels  them  to  lower  prices,  except  when  they  tem- 
porarily squeeze  the  public  when  they  dare  to  do  so  by  raising 
prices,  which  they  cannot  keep  up,  as  competitors  would  instantly 
rush  in.  Murder  and  arson  are  favorite  weapons  of  some  of 
these  giant  corporations.  The  methods  of  the  beast  and  the  sav- 
age are  used  by  aggregations  of  beasts  and  savages.  The  grab 
propensity  is  not  hidden  through  robbers  banding  themselves  to- 
gether. When  these  giant  combines  fight  one  another  then  civil- 
ization and  the  common  people  get  the  benefit  of  the  contest. 


CHAPTER  XL 

DEVELOPMENT  OF  THE  MIND. 

The  new-born  child  has  an  undeveloped  brain  just  as  many 
other  parts  of  its  body  are  not "  developed ;  its  organs  of  sense 
for  sight,  hearing,  touch,  taste  and  smell  are  imperfect  and  not 
well  attached  to  the  brain,  and  the  bundles  of  telegraph  lines  that 
connect  the  different  regions  of  the  brain  in  the  grown  person  are 
altogether  wanting  in  the  immature  child.  Some  of  these  bundles 
that  are  the  most  important  by  way  of  inheritance  from  the  races 
and  the  animals  that  have  preceded  us  begin  to  appear  in  the  brain 
and  spinal  cord  four  months  before  birth.  But  in  the  upper  and 
middle  part  of  the  brain  these  white  bundles  are  not  formed  until 
the  child  is  ready  to  be  born,  the  nerves  in  the  brain  that  pass 
between  the  upper  part  of  the  spinal  cord,  the  centre  for  vision, 
and  the  centre  for  leg  movements  being  the  first  to  appear ;  the 
nerve  bundles  that  pass  down  the  spinal  cord  to  enable  the  brain 
to  properly  regulate  the  movements  of  the  body  and  limbs  do  not 
appear  until  after  birth ;  the  great  mass  of  connecting  bundles 
between  the  spinal  cord  and  brain  begin  to  develop  at  birth  and 
continue  to  the  third  month.  The  front  part  of  the  brain  and 
the  lower  portions  of  the  middle  part  of  the  brain  do  not  begin 
to  develop  until  the  fifth  month,  and  then  they  continue  to  grow 
to  the  ninth  month.  This  includes  provision  for  eyesight  to  be 
connected  with  leg  motions,  and  then  the  gradual  development  of 
other  tracts  for  the  head,  arms  and  other  parts,  and  then  the  high- 
est intellectual  part  of  the  brain  behind  the  forehead,  being  the 
last  to  develop,  is  in  keeping  with  the  evolutionary  history  of  man 
backward  to  his  earliest  animal  ancestry. 

Now  the  ability  of  the  new-born  child  to  grasp  a  stick  and 
support  his  own  weight  by  holding  on  to  it  with  his  hands,  points 
to  the  early  construction  of  the  nerves  that  pass  between  the  hands 
and  the  spinal  cord  centres,  much  lower  than  the  brain,  and  this 

381 


382  HE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

indicates  the  tree  life  of  our  ancestry,  and  the  use  of  the  hands 
thus  early  in  clinging  to  the  mother  and  in  passing  from  one 
bough  to  the  other.  The  feet  also  have  some  grasping  ability  and 
are  turned  inward  as  are  those  of  monkeys,  and  where  ankles  re- 
main weak  and  the  child  walks  on  the  outer  side  of  his  foot  it  is 
because  the  later  developed  muscles  to  that  part  have  failed  to 
grow  properly.  And  just  so  when  different  parts  of  the  brain 
stop  growing  in  keeping  with  the  age  of  the  individual  then  the 
child  may  become  idiotic. 

The  helplessness  of  the  infant  has  its  analogy  in  the  low  grade 
intelligence  of  early  animal  existence,  but  instincts  begin  in  many 
mammals  at  birth,  and  the  moment  the  bird  is  hatched  automatic 
reflex  acts  are  performed  through  such  instincts,  which  are  the 
accumulated  results  of  more  than  a  million  years  of  ancestral 
learning.  Little  chickens  just  out  of  the  shell  follow  the  flight 
of  insects  and  peck  at  food.  The  baby  cannot  hold  his  head  up 
or  guide  his  leg  and  arm  motions.  At  first  he  cannot  see  any 
better  than  the  youngest  puppy,  and  in  many  other  respects  he 
is  less  mature  than  the  generality  of  new-born  animals,  not  wholly 
because  the  higher  the  animal  the  longer  and  more  helpless  is  his 
infancy,  but  the  vastly  more  complex  anatomy  of  the  superior 
animal  requires  more  time  and  a  greater  range  of  material  to  per- 
fect its  organs,  to  perform  the  functions  inherited  from  a  longer 
line  of  ancestry,  who  have  undergone  o-reater  changes  in  their 
brain  development  than  have  the  lower  kinds  of  life.  Appropriate 
parts  are  needed  to  perform  instinctive  acts,  and  we  must  wait 
till  the  brain  parts  mature  in  the  infant,  as  feathers  have  to  grow 
on  the  bird's  wing  before  it  can  fly.  A  very  low  instinctive  reflex 
is  the  grasp  of  the  nipple  by  the  new-born,  but  even  this  can  not 
be  done  if  the  child  is  born  too  soon.  The  earliest  movements  are 
kicks  before  birth,  and  later  cries,  sneezing,  grimaces,  contortions, 
sucking,  and  immoderate,  irregular  motions.  Restlessness  con- 
tinues throughout  childhood,  and  involuntary  squirming  occurs 
when  the  child  is  curbed  as  during  lesson  learning,  because  as 
yet  the  energies  are  too  general  to  be  directed  mainly  in  a  few 
channels,  and  nerve  tracts  are  too  incomplete  to  allow  definite 
well-regulated  movements  at  this  period.  The  irregularity  of  the 
idiot  motions  is  explained  by  failure  to  develop  the  final  complex 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  383 

brain  connections  that  distribute  impulses  intelligently..  When  a 
chicken  has  its  head  cut  off  it  flops  about  convulsively  in  the 
absence  of  its  higher  regulative  apparatus,  the  brain.  When 
movements  become  more  intelligent,  better  adapted  to  definite 
purposes,  then  they  are  said  to  be  co-ordinated,  and  this  co-ordi- 
nation, or  improvement  in  the  way  the  child  handles  himself, 
keeps  pace  with  the  growth  of  the  finer  connections,  the  telegraph 
lines  in  the  brain.  The  motions  then  tell  What  is  taking  place  in 
the  child.  The  poorly  regulated  movements  are  observed  also 
in  the  child's  first  efforts  to  write  when  he  keeps  his  tongue,  feet, 
face  and  hands  going.  Adults  learning  to  write  do  the  same,  as 
their  writing  centres  in  the  brain  are  not  well  connected  with  mo- 
tions. 

Sneezing  at  birth  is  attributed  to  the  cold  air  contact  with  the 
skin  and  sensitive  nostrils;  it  is  a  reflex  instinctive  expulsion  of 
substances  from  the  breathing  passag^es.  A  tickle  induces  reflex 
attempts  to  escape.  Darwin  noted  a  seventh  day  infant  bent  his 
toes  and  drew  away  his  foot  when  the  sole  was  touched,  the  palm 
closed  when  touched  and  opened  when  the  back  of  the  hand  was 
touched.  Months  pass  before  the  child  regulates  his  hand  move- 
ments, showing  that  experience  was  the  gradual  teacher  of  his 
ancestry.  Before  five  months  he  holds  his  mother's  breast.^ 
Though  grasping  can  be  done  in  a  reflex  way  without  intention- 
it  was  the  seventh  month  before  efforts  were  made  to  grasp  an 
object  with  the  hand. 

Desire  and  attention  were  expressed  a  few  days  later  by  his 
extending  his  arms,  protruding  his  lips  and  looking  earnestly  at 
his  father.  In  a  few  weeks  what  was  purely  mechanical  becomes 
voluntary.  As  Compayre  notes,  the  history  of  all  the  child's  mo- 
tions are  the  same  irresistible,  blind  impulses  at  first,  gradually 
conscious  desires,  thoughtless  but  with  an  end  to  be  attained,  he 
comes  to  direct  his  motions,  though  ignorant  of  how  they  are 
carried  on,  and  for  that  matter  seldom  does  he  ever  know  or  care, 
however  old. 

Children  do  not  follow  objects  with  their  eyes  at  first;   they 

*  The  Intellectual  and  Moral  Development  of  the  Child,  Gabriel  Com- 
payre, tr.  by  Mary  E.  Wilson,  1896. 

'  Preyer,  The  Senses  and  the  Will,  p.  241. 


384  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

later  learn  to  direct  their  looks  and  fix  them  upon  objects  and 
appreciate  distances.  The  light  pains  the  child's  eyes,  though 
nearly  blind.  The  field  and  range  of  the  vision  of  the  new-born 
is  limited  and  short.  He  does  not  see  to  the  right  or  left,  but  only 
in  a  straight  line,  and  not  very  far  away.  He  cannot  move  his- 
head  or  eyeballs  rapidly,  and  correct  vision  depends  upon  ability 
to  oscillate  the  eye.  The  angular  sensitiveness  of  the  retina  and 
visual  tracts  is  not  what  it  becomes  later.  At  a  short  distance  in 
front  of  him  he  sees  the  candle  light  held  before  him,  but  farther 
away  he  loses  it.  Every  new-born  child  is  short-sighted,  myopic, 
and  his  ability  to  see  farther  away  increases  with  the  months 
passing.  A  child  of  two  months  can  see  a  foot  and  a  half  off, 
one  of  three  months  a  yard.  For  a  few  weeks  the  eyelid  motions 
are  neither  co-ordinate  nor  symmetrical,  one  eye  opens  while  the 
other  is  shut,  and  the  eyelids  do  not  accompany  the  pupil  regu- 
larly in  their  movements,  and  co-ordination  of  the  eyelids  with 
eyeball  movements  does  not  exist  at  first.  Dodging^  squinting, 
from  what  Preyer  calls  the  aggressive  hand,  does  not  exist  during 
the  first  weeks.  The  eye  motions  are  not  united  up  to  the  third 
month.  Espinas  mentions  a  child  who  followed  the  light  of  a 
lamp  with  his  eyes  on  the  twenty-sixth  day,  and  at  two  months 
directed  his  glance  better  and  better,  and  even  fixes  them  upon 
the  eyes  of  the  person  speaking  to  him,  instinctively,  reflexly  and 
not  by  will  power.  Darwin's  son  had  not  acquired  the  faculty  of 
following  an  object  with  his  eyes  when  rapidly  waved  before  him 
till  seven  and  a  half  months.  At  the  twenty-ninth  month  Preyer 
saw  a  child  follow  the  flight  of  a  bird  with  his  eyes,  and  I  think 
this  record  is  a  misprint  for  twenty-ninth  week. 

One  born  blind  whose  sight  is  given  him  by  an  operation  said 
he  saw  an  extended  bright  field  where  everything  was  dim,  con- 
fused and  in  motion,  so  likely  it  is  with  the  first  sight  of  the  in- 
fant. Even  at  two  or  three  months  the  child  does  not  distinguish 
one  object  from  another,  a  few  bright  points  as  lights,  the  reflec- 
tion from  the  eyes  of  persons  or  animals,  bright  playthings,  etc., 
are  seen,  and  then  gradually  new  images  appear.  In  the  second 
and  third  month  he  seems  to  see  new  things,  though  they  were 
there  previously. 

The  infant's  color  appreciation  is  "raw,"  for  he  is  not  sensible 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  385 

of  shades  of  color.  At  four  months  a  boy  began  to  prefer  bright 
red  to  other  colors.  Red  is  the  first  ray  visible  in  the  spectrum 
and  the  preference  of  savages  and  barbarians. 

The  short-sightedness  of  the  infant  is  allied  to  the  indifferencQ 
of  animals  to  objects  in  the  extreme  distance.  The  inability  to 
fix  the  attention  is  what  is  found  in  most  dogs  and  monkeys. 

After  the  color  sense  has  come  to  the  child  then  the  ability  to 
recognize  forms  develops.  He  greets  his  mother  with  smiles  as 
he  associates  her  with  a  past  full  of  dinners,  but  the  stranger  as- 
tonishes and  frightens  him.  Preyer  says  his  son  at  two  years 
recognized  the  photographs  of  familiar  people,  but- long  before 
this  he  knows  persons  apart,  the  face,  form,  stature  have  im- 
pressed the  child.  At  four  months  Darwin  found  this  ability  to 
recognize.  Tiedeman's  son  at  the  fifth  month  turned  away  from 
black  clothes,  at  eight  months  this  child  was  afifectionate  to  those 
he  knew.  Cuignet's  child  recognized  his  mother  and  smiled  at 
her,  but  not  at  others.  There  is  a  decided  disposition  of  the  infant 
at  first  to  fear  strangers  and  many  new  things,  often  capriciously, 
and  later  things  and  persons  he  once  feared  serve  to  amuse  him. 

Binet  found  an  appreciation  of  small  differences  of  distances 
by  comparison  in  a  girl  of  twO'  and  a  half  years. 

Attention,  curiosity,  sympathy,  astonishment,  intellectual  and 
moral  instincts  depend  largely  for  their  existence  upon  sight  reg- 
istrations in  the  brain. 

Preyer  describes  the  child  groping,  stretching  out  his  hands 
to  seize  objects  far  out  of  his  reach,  at  twenty  months  one  wished 
to  jump  from  a  window  to  his  father  in  the  garden.  This  inabil- 
ity to  judge  distances  is  shown  by  the  blind  when  given  sight, 
feeling  as  though  all  objects  touched  their  eyes.  Nor  can  they 
tell  cubes  and  spheres  from  squares  and  discs,  the  human  face 
looks  like  a  plane,  though  they  knew  how  it  felt.  One  previously 
blind  girl  tried  to  grasp  an  object  thirty  yards  away. 

Taine  speaks  of  a  little  girl  at  the  third  month  who  began  to 
associate  color  with  touch  and  muscular  impressions  of  distance 
and  form.  It  is  not  at  the  outset  that  the  touch  perceptions  begin 
to  join  the  sight  perceptions.  Twenty  days  after  an  operation 
the  sight  impressions  were  not  yet  related  to  touch.  One  picked 
up  a  cat  to  be  able  to  tell  it  from  a  dog  and  said :    "Well,  pussy, 


386  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

henceforth  I  shall  know  you."  The  child  learns  that  the  tree  ap- 
pears larger  as  he  nears  it  and  the  house  looks  smaller  as  he  leaves 
It,  but  he  learns  these  matters  long  before  he  can  walk. 

A  few  hours  or  days  he  is  temporarily  deaf,  from  the  absence 
of  air  in  the  ear-drum  of  the  new-born  child.  The  first  impres- 
sions of  sounds  to  an  infant  are  startling  and  react  more  violently 
than  sight.  A  loud  sneeze  heard  for  the  first  time  makes  the  baby 
act  like  a  jumping-jack.  Persons  who  have  had  ear  wax  obstruc- 
tions to  hearing  removed  suffer  from  the  new  loudness  of  all 
sounds.  But  as  with  strange  sights  that  at  first  alarmed  so  it  is 
with  sounds  when  they  become  familiar;  as  Darwin  says,  they 
finally  seem  to  be  accepted  as  good  jokes.  When  a  month  and 
a  few  days  old  Tiedeman's  son  delighted  in  piano  music.  In  the 
sixth  week  he  opened  his  eyes  wide  when  sung  to ;  in  the  eighth 
week  he  was  attentive  to  music  and  laughed  and  smiled ;  the 
thirteenth  week  he  was  quieted  when  he  heard  notes,  but  he  liked 
noise  because  it  was  noise,  and  as  with  savages  there  was  no  ques- 
tion of  taste,  but  if  amused  by  all  noises  he  was  charmed  by 
music,  for  it  suggested  order,  regularity  and  beauty,  which  were 
to  him  mere  exercise  of  nerve  channels,  for  the  time  being  di- 
verting his  kicks,  sprawls  and  coos.  Cuignet's  child  at  one 
month  recognized  the  mother's  voice  when  it  could  not  tell  people 
apart.  At  first  it  is  the  pitch  of  sound  that  is  appreciated,  while 
later  it  is  the  tone  and  articulation. 

After  the  touch  sense,  taste  is  the  next  earliest  faculty  to 
develop;  the  child  rejects  sour  milk.  Preyer's  son  shook  his  head 
and  closed  his  eyes  when  a  new  dish  was  offered  him,  his  face 
expressed  astonishment,  and  yet  the  food  was  pleasing  to  him, 
for  he  asked  for  it  later.  The  sight  of  some  dishes  is  repulsive 
to  some  children,  nor  is  it  easy  to  always  be  able  to  tell  why  this 
is  so.    Heredity  and  habit  are  potent  in  tastes. 

The  new-born  is  indifferent  to  odors.  Smell  appears  illy  de- 
veloped from  the  very  start  of  life,  but  it  plays  a  part  in  prefer- 
ence of  food  or  nurses.  At  the  fifteenth  month  cologne  pleased 
Preyer's  son,  and  not  before.  Some  children  develop  a  most  ex- 
traordinary olfactory  discrimination,  being  able  to  recognize  per- 
sons apart  by  their  individual  odor.  As  the  smelling  sense  was 
an  earlier  means  of  searching  for  food  and  telling  of  an  enemy's 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  387 

approach  it  would  seem  that  this  delay  in  its  development  is  ano- 
malous, but  nature  often  abridges  the  tendency  of  structures  to 
abort,  and  as  the  smelling  organs  have  grown  less  important  in 
man  than  his  vision  the  facilities  for  sight  are  mainly  attended 
to.  There  are,  however,  large  bundles  called  the  hippocampus 
major  and  fornix  fibres  in  the  brain  which,  in  my  opinion,  for- 
merly related  the  eating  with  the  smelling  centers  of  the  brain, 
but  as  the  olfactory  lobe  at  the  brain  base  degenerated  into  a  mere 
tract,  with  embryonal  elements  for  the  most  part,  the  nose  became 
poorly  connected  with  the  olden  nerve  paths  in  the  brain,  and 
these  latter  have  a  tendency  to  diminish,  especially  at  the  part 
called  the  pes  hippocampi,  and  the  hippocampus  minor  could  be 
regarded  as  relating  the  eye  registrations  in  the  cuneus  with  the 
former  paths  which  were  connected  with  the  smelling  sense.  The 
large  size  of  the  old  paths,  as  compared  with  the  smaller  size  of 
the  new,  the  major  with  the  minor,  could  be  regarded  as  due  to 
the  millions  of  years  in  which  smell  guided  the  eating  motions  in 
our  animal  progenitors,  while  the  acquisition  of  eyesight  discrim- 
ination in  such  matters  is  comparatively  recent,  only  a  few  hun- 
dred thousand  years  for  instance.  So  the  major  bundles  re- 
main the  larger  as  yet  in  spite  of  their  tendency  to  disappear,  and 
often  a  change  in  the  uses  of  a  part  suffices  to  retain  it  when  the 
former  use  has  ceased. 

Disagreeable  touch  impressions,  as  too  tight  bandaging,  or 
sprinkling  in  baptism,  are  resented.  The  child  appears  to  alter- 
nate pain  and  pleasure,  but  at  first  pain  is  most  evident  by  its 
incessant  cries.  Preyer  says  that  it  is  altogether  wrong  to  main- 
tain that  a  child  has  no  fear  unless  it  has  been  taught  him.  It  is 
native  and  associated  with  all  new  impressions,  as  wild  animals 
are  startled  by  the  unknown.  A  simple  change  in  costume  may 
arouse  fear  in  a  young  child,  as  when  a  mother  put  on  a  large  hat 
her  baby  was  greatly  frightened. 

It  bears  upon  the  evolution  of  emotions  that  anger  is  a  feeling 
that  often  replaces  fear  in  a  child;  at  first  indefinite  tracts  dif- 
fused the  feeling  of  surprise  in  tremblings  and  badly  regulated 
motions  to  escape,  but  with  the  advent  of  a  better  organized,  more 
definite  nervous  system  effort  to  resent  the  unpleasant  experience 
would  be  suggested,  and  the  instant  the  unknown  becomes  famil- 


388  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

*iar  there  has  been  a  change  for  the  better,  an  evolutionary  step, 
in  the  nervous  system.  A  child  of  four  and  a  half  went  into  a 
rage  over  an  unknown  tongue  his  father  spoke  to  him,  the  odious 
sounds  at  first  scared  and  later  annoyed  him.  Compayre  holds 
that  astonishment  in  a  child  is  at  first  synonymous  with  fear  and 
later  with  admiration.  Surprise  and  fright  are  one  and  the  same 
to  him.  At  four  months  Darwin's  son  regarded  all  loud  sounds 
as  good  jokes,  but  an  unfamiliar  snore  frightened  him.  So  it  is 
not  in  all  instances  that  when  familiar  with  matters  the  infant- 
changes  to  rage  or  admiration ;  it  depends  upon  associated  im- 
pressions, a  laugh  at  baby's  surprise  could  be  recalled  when  he 
once  more  heard  the  noise  that  startled  him  at  first,  and  his  imi- 
.tative  disposition  causes  him  to  laugh  when  the  noise  is  repeated, 
as  he  has  learned  its  harmlessness,  but  things  disagreeable  remain 
so  from  the  first.  Darkness  frightens  children  and  sometimes 
animals.  Imagination  fills  the  night  with  terrors.  There  seems 
to  be  a  natural  repugnance  for  black  in  children,  and  solitude  is 
usually  terrible  to  the  child.  There  is  much  explained  by  hered- 
ity in  real  dangers  experienced,  and  the  persistence  of  barbarous 
superstitions.  Children,  horses  and  some  other  animals  show  fear 
over  movements  without  apparent  cause,  as  when  a  newspaper 
or  an  umbrella  is  blown  about.  The  skittish  horse  has  a  sus- 
picious qui  vive  fear  of  danger  at  every  turn,  and  his  later  amuse- 
ment when  familiar  with  what  at  first  frightened  him  is  shown 
by  his  play  pretense  of  being  scared.  This  fear  of  the  unknown 
that  causes  the  horse  to  shy  at  a  wheelbarrow  operates  to  drive 
the  superstitious  into  the  temple. 

Fearlessness  is  often  spoken  of  as  an  infantile  trait,  but  this 
is  merely  because  danger  is  not  recognized  and  there  is  no  fore- 
sight. He  does  not  wince  on  being  menaced  unless  he  has  been 
struck ;  he  knows  only  caresses,  but  he  has  tears  for  imaginary 
troubles. 

The  effect  of  mental  impressions  in  changing  the  chemical 
properties  of  the  blood  and  devoured  secretions  is  shown  in  the 
instance  of  anger  converting  a  mother's  milk  into  poison  for  its 
offspring,  causing  convulsions.  The  gluttony  of  the  infant  in- 
ducing everything  to  be  stuck  in  its  mouth  is  a  consequence  of  all 
its  nervous  system  being  built  upon  mgestive  desires.    When  the 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  389 

higher  brain  quahties  are  lost,  as  in  the  dement,  these  same  glut- 
tonous indications  appear  again.  Affection  in  a  child  has  its  ori- 
gin in  the  selfish  recollection  of  personal  pleasure  given  by  the 
nurse  or  mother.  A  toy,  a  dog,  or  cat,  has  perhaps  the  same  rank 
in  affection  as  father  and  mother  (Compayre).  He  also  loves 
because  he  is  loved.  "It  is  by  dint  of  receiving  that  the  heart 
ends  in  giving."^ 

At  six  months  Darwm.'s  son  was  sad  when  his  nurse  pretended 
to  cry,  but  not  till  a  year  old  did  he  express  love  actively,  as  when 
his  nurse  returned,  by  embracing  her. 

The  laugh  of  a  child  is  associated  with  appeased  hunger  or  the 
expectation  of  that  pleasure.  See  it  chuckle  impatiently  in  antici- 
pation, and  laugh  and  smile  at  the  breast,  and  the  broad  grin  of 
satisfaction  when  gorged.  It  is  the  glorified  smile  of  sanctity  in 
its  original  state.  The  saint  and  baby  has  a  belly  full  of  pro- 
tection against  want. 

At  six  weeks  the  laugh  appears  and  the  smile  is  a  symbol  of 
laughter  inherited  from  the  associated  habit  of  enlarging  the 
mouth  to  eat  large  morsels  of  food. 

Darwin  notes  that  tears  appear  at  the  third  or  fourth  month, 
hut  Preyer  says  at  the  twenty-third  day.  The  ''crocodile  tears" 
appear  directly  useful  in  lubricating  the  eyes  pained  by  sun  glare 
and  can  be  regarded  as  a  substitute  for  the  direct  salt  water  bath- 
ing of  the  eyes  by  fishes.  So  by  serviceable  associated  habit  tears 
have  come  to  express  mental  grief  which  at  first  were  shed  to 
ease  physical  pain  of  the  eyeball  dryness,  and  step  by  step  ex- 
tended to  other  physical  pains,  and  finally  to  all  kinds  of  pain 
whatever. 

The  first  suxxcring  is  physical  in  the  infant,  and  later  come  the 
emotions  of  fear,  anger,  surprise,  chagrin,  and  finally  moral  grief. 
In  man  tears  often  are  suppressed  in  physical  pain  and  appear 
only  as  an  expression  of  moral  grief.  There  are  also  emotional 
tears  of  joy,  contentment,  satisfaction,  showing  that  the  lachrymal 
gland  must  be  surcharged  by  a  rush  of  blood  to  its  vicinity  by 
associated  action  of  all  emotional  influences. 

Anger  turns  the  baby's  face  red  and  fright  may  pale  it,  but 
there  is  variability  in  blushing.     Some  adults  either  pale  or  blush 

^  Guyau,  Education  et  heredite,  p.  6^. 


390  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

under  emotional  influence.  Blushes  are  seldom  precocious,  and 
thus  special  vaso-motor  action  appears  with  the  later  mental  devel- 
opment. 

The  child  expresses  with  his  physiognomy,  humility  or  cour- 
age, weakness  or  strength,  surprise,  astonishment,  admiration  and 
the  pout  of  bad  humor,  and  numerous  evidences  of  pleasure  or 
pain. 

"Memory  does  not  appear  until  the*  third  year,  according  to 
some.""^  Others  say  the  fourth  or  fifth  year,  but  Emile  Rousseau^ 
says :  "Although  memory  and  reasoning  are  two  essentially  dif- 
ferent faculties  still  one  does  not  really  develop  without  the  other. 
Before  the  age  of  reason  the  child  does  not  develop  ideas,  but 
images." 

"The  memory  of  ideas,  the  adult  memory,  which  is  capable 
of  following  and  recognizing  all  the  threads  of  a  long  reason- 
ing, is  absent  in  the  young  child,  but  children  remember  sounds, 
forms,  sensations,  everything  they  perceive  and  feel,  abstract 
ideas  not  being  yet  within  their  reach." 

The  adult  does  not  remember  the  first  years  of  his  life,  but 
certainly  the  infant  has  memory,  only  it  develops  into  a  different 
sort  from  that  of  the  adult,  who  remembers  his  memories  back- 
to  certain  periods,  and  beyond  that,  except  on  extraordinary  oc- 
casions, fails  to  do  so.  At  times  very  startling  impressions  may 
be  recalled  from  an  earlier  date  than  five,  four  or  even  three  years 
o£  age."  Earlier  recollections  depend  on  precocity,  the  character 
of  the  incidents  witnessed,  their  novelty  or  importance,  a  catas- 
trophe, misfortune,  fall,  while  ordinary  events  of  monotonous 
life  will  be  forgotten"  (Compayre).  Consciousness  ceases  to  be 
concerned  in  fully  adjusted  monotonous  matters,  routine  events 
of  infancy,  though  they  leave  their  impress  upon  the  brain.  Ex- 
ceptional incidents  of  shock  or  blood  supply  changes  may  return 
forgotten  events  to  consciousness,  however. 

Every  new  word  the  child  learns  is  an  act  of  memory.  A 
seventeen  months'  child  recalled  its  nurse's  face  after  her  absence 
of  six  days  (Preyer),  but  at  seven  months  he  did  not  know  her 

*  Madame  Campan,  De  L'Education,  Lib.  II,  Ch.  I. 
'Book  II. 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  39I 

after  four  weeks'  absence.  Perez  cites  a  child  a  year  old  recalling 
a  servant  after  a  month's  absence. 

So  the  child  does  have  memory  from  its  birth,  but  this  mem- 
ory is  fragile  and  easily  obliterated.  Continued  repetition  of 
impressions  is  necessary  to  fix  events  in  the  mind,  and  even 
these  in  infancy  may  sink  into  association  with  automatic  per- 
formances and  fade  from  consciousness  largely. 

A  child  mentioned  by  Liebnitz,  who  became  blind  at  three 
years,  retained  no  sight  recollection.  Preyer  tells  of  a  little  girl 
who,  at  seven  years,  lost  her  eyesight  and  regained  it  at  seventeen 
years  of  age,  but  had  to  learn  anew  how  to  name  colors,  distances 
and  dimensions. 

The  child  hears  his  mother's  tongue  constantly,  the  same 
words  repeated,  and  he  recognizes  objects  and  persons  because 
he  sees  them  every  day,  and  when  children  are  often  reminded  of 
them  they  fancy  that  they  remember  earlier  events  when  in  reality 
it  is  only  the  mention  of  these  earlier  events  that  they  recall.  The 
child  confuses  past  and  present;  an  hour  and  a  week  ago  are 
about  the  same  to  him. 

By  a  return  to  the  original  scenes  of  childhood  after  many 
years  events  may  be  vividly  recalled  that  were  not  known  to  be 
in  the  memory  at  all.  Old  dormant  impressions  are  revived.  A 
child  of  four  years  fractured  his  skull,  says  Abercrombie,  and 
did  not  recall  it  till  fifteen,  when  he  had  a  delirious  fever,  and 
then  spoke  of  ail  the  details  of  the  operation  on  his  skull. 

Compayre  and  other  psychologists  speak  of  hereditary  mem- 
ory as  an  instinct  determined  by  ancestral  experiences.  Eggar 
says:  "Memory  is  produced  at  the  earliest  age  for  acts  that  are 
frequently  repeated;  it  is  slower  in  the  case  of  accidental  acts. 
At  fifteen  months  a  child  goes  to  a  toy  accidentally  fallen  under  a 
chair;  before  this  he  could  not  have  done  so.  At  six  months  a 
child  burns  his  hand  on  a  hot  plate  and  afterwards  avoids  the 
plates.  In  lactation,  play  and  in  walking  memory  is  evident. 
Memory  has  been  represented  as  a  form  of  habit  and  instinct  may 
be  defined  as  a  hereditary  memory,  an  impersonal  habit.  "If 
words  are  necessary  to  ideas  they  are  to  the  remembrance  of  par- 
ticular perception,  and  to  cause  them  to  remain."^    The  uncertain 

®  Compayre.  p.  227. 


392  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

State  of  the  memory  during  the  first  month  is  laid  to  the  absence 
of  language,  but  the  brain  structure  itself  is  more  at  fault.  Be- 
fore two  years  the  baby  has  precise  remembrance  of  familiar  toys, 
whippings,  candy,  falls,  a  kitten,  caresses,  kisses,  etc."^  "The 
child's  mind  is  like  a  sponge,  always  thirsty."^  One  has  more 
power  of  attention  at  fifteen  than  at  ten,  more  at  ten  than  at  five, 
and  so  age  improves  one  of  the  conditions  of  remembrance.  The 
child's  attention  is  short,  but  is  always  alert,  ready  and  on  the 
watch  for  new  impressions. 

So  the  child  babbles  of  unimportant  matters ;  he  sees  all  and 
tells  all.  He  forgets  nothing  recently  learned  or  that  affects  him 
keenly.  After  the  fourth  or  fifth  year  recollections  become  very 
durable  and  are  better  as  we  grow  older.  The  child's  organs  of 
retentiveness  are  not  stable  till  the  fourth  or  fifth  year ;  he  does 
not  see  or  hear,  or  recognize  stably  till  the  fourth  year  or  there- 
abouts, hence  after  this,  when  the  brain  is  more  retentive,  when 
the  power  to  retain  and  recall  is  developed,  recollections  are  more 
accessible,  although  impressions  made  at  the  first  period  are  latent 
in  the  mind,  for  the  fact  that  they  are  sometimes  unexpectedly 
recalled  shows  that  consciousness  may  be  excited  to  recalll  these 
dormant  spots  in  recollection.  It  may  indeed  be  questioned  if 
anything  is  ever  really  obliterated  from  the  mind,  when  states 
of  consciousness  may  recall  things  supposed  to  be  forgotten,  and 
dreams  may  be  said  to  sometimes  present  ancestral  memories 
mixed  with  the  acquired  in  a  jumbled  way.  Association  causes 
"a  bit  of  song  our  mothers  used  to  sing,  or  a  bit  of  landscape 
lighted  up  by  our  childhood  sun  to  reappear."  The  recollections 
of  childhood  are  the  last  to  disappear  in  mental  disease.  Memory 
is  lost  in  the  reverse  chronological  order  of  its  acquisition.  In 
story-telling  the  child  lays  stress  on  the  exact  words  and  wants 
no  change ;  later  he  interpolates  and  improves  and  changes  by  his 
imagination  being  at  work.  An  imbecile  has  to  go  back  to  Mon- 
day in  naming  days  of  the  week,  and  cannot  begin  with  Thursday 
or  some  other  day. 

Lubbock  found  a  difference  in  memory  between  bees  in  a  hive 
by  testing  individuals  as  to  their  recollection  of  newly-made  €n- 

'' Nicolay,  Les  Enfants  mal  eleves,  p.  318. 
^  G.  Dros,  L'Enfant. 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  393 

trances  to  the  hive.  Certain  bees  never  could  adapt  themselves 
to  the  changed  door;  there  seemed  to  be  a  lack  of  adjustability 
to  new  conditions  of  memory,  the  old  association  fastening  them 
to  old  performances. 

Memories  are  more  numerous  than  the  senses,  for  one  recalls 
forms  and  may  still  be  a  little  sensitive  to  colors.  Memory  cor- 
responds to  each  of  the  five  senses  and  also  to  different  operations 
of  the  mind,  and  there  are  great  irregularities  in  memory.  Suc- 
cessive perceptions  acquire  value  only  when  memory  preserves 
them,  and  when  it  renders  possible  comparisons  between  new 
perceptions  that  follow.  Compayre  does  not  think  that  the  per- 
ception constitutes  an  intelligent  act  in  the  highest  sense.  Per- 
ception forced  upon  the  mind  does  not  show  the  activity  of  the 
brain.  It  is  another  matter  when  by  means  of  memory  a  com- 
parison can  be  made  between  a  past  and  a  present  perception. 
Judgment  by  comparison  continually  increased  forms  the  human 
mind. 

Perception,  memory  and  imagination  are  three  distinct  terms, 
three  successive  and  correlative  stages  of  intellectual  development. 
The  child  remembers  only  what  he  perceives.  Imagination  pre- 
supposes memory.  Images  are  of  two  kinds — the  exact  and  inex- 
act— and  memory  corresponds  to  them.  To  have  combination 
invention  of  active  imagination  it  is  necessary  to  have  a  large 
number  of  sensible  representations. 

A  child  sees  snow  for  the  first  time,  though  his  ancestry  have 
perhaps  also  seen  it  for  millions  of  years  before,  and  he  may  have 
also  seen  mountains,  but  not  mountains  of  snow,  yet  his  imagi- 
nation may  join  the  two.  But  in  this  case  also  ancestral  memory 
may  play  a  part,  for  mountains  of  snow  have  undoubtedly  been 
seen  by  many  of  our  progenitors.  It  suggests  that  if  recent  expe- 
riences cohere  with  the  ancestral  in  memory  then  the  imagina- 
tion would  be  more  impressed  in  such  cases.  You  cannot  imag- 
ine what  you  have  not  some  basis  for  in  experience.  In  a  picture 
a  child  will  recognize  details  as  a  man,  a  house,  etc.,  but  not  the 
landscape,  though  he  may  be  conscious  of  its  familiarity  to  him ; 
he  is  not  yet  able  to  give  expression  to  his  impressions  of  it. 
The  imagination  runs  riot  in  dreams,  and  it  is  supposable  that 
dreaming  furthers  imagination  in  the  child,  the  process  being 


394  ^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

dependent  upon  changes  in  blood  supply  to  the  brain.  Taine  re- 
marks :'■*  "The  mental  state  of  little  children  is  in  many  respects 
that  of  primitive  peoples  in  the  mythological  aind  poetic  period. 
The  child  would  create  a  new  mythology  if  left  alone.  His  touch- 
ing faith  in  accepting  your  lying  fables,  and  his  weaving  them 
into  the  fabric  of  his  own  fancies  is  proof  of  his  natural  disposi- 
tion. The  child  invests  inanimate  objects  with  life  and  feeling 
and  personifies  them;  he  makes  gods  of  them  sometimes,  just  as 
he  will  humanize  animals  and  be  a  prey  to  Aesop's  fables,  'The 
rainbow  is  asleep,'  'the  moon  is  broken,'  'the  moon  is  mended,' 
'the  sun  has  gone  to  bed,'  'the  bent  pin  is  lame,'  'tomorrow  he  will 
get  up  and  eat  a  piece  of  bread  and  butter,'  are  all  childish  anthro- 
pomorphisms identical  with  savage  ideas.  He  talks  to  his  doll,  he 
says  his  dream  is  naughty,  he  asks  'what  does  the  rabbit  say/ 
and  'what  does  the  big  tree  say  ?'  " 

George  Sand  contests  Rousseau's  idea  of  explaining  things  to 
children.  She  would  preserve  the  marvelous  in  the  child. 
Some  teachers  adhere  to  the  idea  that  the  primitive  dispositions 
should  be  catered  to,  and  in  an  extreme  view  of  this,  decency,  man- 
ners, behavior  should  be  postponed  indefinitely.  In  my  opinion 
the  ultra-animal  is  difficult  enough  to  improve  upon,  and  the 
sooner  we  begin  to  try  to  do  so  the  better  it  will  be  for  the  future 
of  the  child.  This  can  be  practiced  reasonably,  and  when  a  child 
becomes  capable  of  proper  instruction  he  should  be  taught  to 
abandon  his  cruelty,  his  intense  selfishness,  his  general  savagery. 
To  pander  to  them  when  he  is  capable  of  being  improved  is  to 
do  him  a  disservice.  One  mistaken  educator  would  encourage 
slang  and  roughness  in  children  because  such  things  are  natural. 
He  mistakes  these  things  as  stepping  stones  to  better  language 
and  behavior,  and  might  as  well  insist  upon  fingers  being  used  at 
meals  and  fighting  over  food  at  the  table  as  our  progenitors  did. 

To  take  the  marvelous  out  of  a  child  is  said  to  go  against 
his  nature,  but  is  it  useful  to  a  child  to  be  loaded  with  lies  that 
frighten  him  through  life  and  make  him  a  prey  to  humbugs  and 
exploiters  of  ignorance?  Better  curb  too  great  indulgence  in 
imagination  as  feverish,  as  animal. 

"Revne  Philosophique.  1876.     Lib.  I,  p.  14. 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  395 

Savages  dream  of  a  paradise  where  all  their  bows  and  arrows 
and  boats  will  be  present. 

The  child  may  be  allowed  to  delight  in  fancies  and  at  the  same 
time  be  taught  not  to  believe  in  them.  He  can  have  the  operation 
of  his  mind  explained  to  him  without  allowing  it  to  lead  him 
astray.  It  is  not  necessary  for  adults  to  believe  in  poetic  fancies, 
and  the  child  knows  that  playing  is  not  real.  Imagination  is  one 
thing  and  belief  is  another.  The  child  can  play  that  his  toys  are 
alive  without  being  lied  to  that  it  is  really  so.  He  loves  to  pre- 
tend that  he  is  deceiving  himself,  and  this  is  true  of  many  adults. 
"Pretty"  means  a  new  pleasure  to  the  child,  and  those  who  con- 
tribute to  the  child's  pleasures  are  the  most  loved  and  hence  the 
selfisli  basis  of  affection. 

Consciousness  develops  first  for  impressions.  Lastly  in  the 
adult  comes  the  memory  of  groups  of  events  and  of  the  individual 
as  the  one  to  whom  these  events  occurred,  the  infant  does  not 
know  himself  as  a  unit,  nor  can  he  tell  his  shoe  from  his  foot,  as 
part  of  his  anatomy.  Consciousness  is  thus  resolvable,  so  far  as 
the  adult  is  concerned,  into  a  memory  of  memories.  The  impres- 
sions made  upon  us  constitute  the  first  ground  for  consciousness, 
disconnected,  unassociated,  and  finally  the  recollection  that  the 
recollections  occurred,  the  memory  of  the  memories  is  another 
kind  of  consciousness. 

In  attention  the  eye  is  fixed,  the  motions  are  lessened,  other 
functions  are  checked,  the  aim  is  centralized.  It  is  an  expres- 
sion of  the  desire  to  know  more,  curiosity,  inquiry,  placing  the 
person  under  the  best  conditions  to  learn,  it  is  listening,  looking 
intently,  or  the  other  senses  may  be  made  equally  attentive ;  you 
can  taste,  touch  or  smell  attentively. 

Association  of  ideas  merely  recalls  memories,  and  education  in 
facts  shows  how  difficult  it  is  to  arouse  proper  associations.  The 
infant  finally  learns  that  water  wets,  the  sun  dries.  It  is  merely 
exercising  a  memory  of  consecutively  related  matters,  or  simul- 
taneous events,  a  picture  presented  to  the  mind  is  recalled.  Dreams 
faultily  relate  these  impressions,  often  inverting  sequences  or 
causes  and  effects. 

Colored  hearing  and  seeing  colors  for  certain  numbers  or 
words,  coukl  be  due  to  vascular  association.     These  colors  change 


396  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

with  age.  The  color  is  simultaneously  excited  in  the  brain  when 
the  figures  or  words  occur,  probably  as  survivals  of  some  early 
Operation  of  fancy,  or  as  an  association. 

The  questions  of  children  show  the  dawn  of  reason.  "Has 
the  moon  wings?"  "Where  do  all  the  days  go?"  The  incessant 
whine  of  "Why?"  is  familiar  to  parents,  or  its  equivalent,  "What 
for?" 

Children  are  very  susceptible  tO'  precedent,  custom  and  gen- 
eral rule.  Permission  makes  a  thing  right  with  them.  The  child 
tries  to  tuck  away  isolated  facts  into  some  generalization,  after  the 
ability  to  generalize  has  appeared.  He  sees  some  things  made, 
and  wants  to  know  who  made  trees,  who'  made  God,  and  so  on. 

A  child's  logic  is  merciless  and  worth  observing,  in  contrast 
with  many  of  the  adult's  tendencies  to  shirk  and  muddle  thought. 

The  anthropomorphic  idea  is  strong  in  children.  The  child 
says  the  tree  is  to  make  the  wind  blow,  and  savages  entertain  this 
idea,  reversing  cause  and  effect,  a  failure,  also,  of  the  highest 
intellects  wliere  unfamiliar  matters  are  to  be  judged. 

"Why  don't  God  kill  the  devil?"  and  "Why  can't  we  see  two 
things  with  two  eyes?"  the  child  asks.  Also,  "If  I  had  gone  up- 
stairs, could  God  make  it  that  I  hadn't  ?"  Theologians,  according 
to  Erasmus,^^  debated  over  "Can  God  make  a  thing  done  not  to 
have  been  done  ?" 

The  child  begins  with  ideas  of  anthropomorphism  and  passes 
to  second-hand,  adopted  ideas  of  monotheism. 

There  is  a  mental  disorder  known  as  Griibelsucht,  or  doubting 
insanity,  which  leaves  the  adult  mind  in  some  such  puzzling  state. 
The  Griibelsucht,  why  is  a  glass  a  glass,  etc.,  is  thus  reversionary, 
and  a  child  shows  the  savage  early  type  of  brain  working  to  which 
the  person  whh  doubt  affliction  is  atavistic. 

A  child's  questions  may  be  symptoms  of  peevishness  and  irri- 
tability, to  be  cuied  by  healthy  distraction,  or  a  romp,  says  Perez 

The  savage  ?.nd  child  readiness  to  accept  dreams  as  real,  or  as 
having  significance,  and  its  confusion  of  dreams  with  realities, 
resembles  also  the  Uinatic's  inability  to  correct  illusions  and  hallu- 
cinations. Old  people  are  supposed  to  become  little  again  by 
some  children.      "When  I  get  big  and  you  are  little,  T  will  whip 

"Froude,  Letters  of  Erasmus,  Lecture  VIL 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  397 

you!"  This  can  be  from  a  mental  balancing  of  the  see-saw  of 
life  by  tlie  child,  who  thinks  that  if  one  grows  big  the  big  ones 
should  grow  lit<-le. 

A  child  gives  you  his  shoe  when  you  ask  for  it,  and  if  you  tell 
him  to  give  you  his  foot  the  baby  will  take  his  foot  in  his  hand 
to  give  it  to  you,  as  he  does  not  yet  realize  his  personal  make-up 
as  consolidated.  He  regards  his  foot  as  a  separate  toy,  and  does 
not  know  that  he  can  move  it  without  holding  it  in  his  hands, 
though  he  sees  it  moving  about.  He  treats  his  toes  as  toys,  and 
puts  them  in  his  mouth.  His  will  is  not  within  his  recollection, 
and  he  does  not  know  yet  what  he  can  do  with  his  limbs,  or  how 
he  can  do  it.  At  first  the  child  does  not  recognize  his  own  image 
in  the  mirror,  but  finally,  by  noting  agreements  of  the  image  with 
his  hand  and  other  movements,  he  infers  that  the  image  is  his. 
Preyer's  boy  did  this  by  the  twenty-first  month,  and  knew  his- 
mother  in  the  glass  by  the  sixtieth  week.  The  linguistic  efforts 
of  a  child  resemble  those  of  savages,  and  they  adopt  hieroglyphic 
pictures  likewise.  The  child  does  not  separate  in  imagination 
what  he  sees  from  what  he  has  seen,  or  resolve  what  he  is  able 
to  see  at  one  time ;  for  he  draws  three  sides  of  a  house  as  in  view 
at  one  instant. 

Children  have  vague  ideas  of  time.  They  talk  of  days  as 
though  they  were  things,  as  moving  things.  ''Where  is  yesterday 
gone  to?"    "Where  will  tomorrow  come  from?" 

The  child  reduces  all  abstractions  to  concrete,  living  realities, 
and  it  is  likely  that  abstractions  in  the  adult  are  merely  concrete 
substitutions.  An  hour  is  an  eternity  at  school.  Infants'  first 
words  are  recognition  signs,  like  "da,"  as  it  points  to  the  object, 
just  as  monkeys  could  announce  things  in  the  distance  by  looks 
and  exclamations.  "Atta,"  all  gone,  says  Preyer's  little  boy,  to 
indicate  an  empty  glass,  or  that  the  light  is  out,  or  the  departure 
of  a  thing,  so  it  comprehends  situations  as  a  movement.  Motion 
with  children  and  primitive  people  is  mixed  up  with  the  mover, 
and  Max  Muller  notes  this  early  confusion  in  language  of  the 
mover  and  moved  as  one  idea.  Another  child  extended  its  ter- 
minal exclamation  to  the  ending  of  music,  the  closing  of  a  drawer, 
the  dropping  of  something,  and  so  on. 


39S  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Minto^^  tells  of  a  child  who  called  his  nurse  mambro,  and  then 
gave  the  same  name  to  her  sewing  machine  (probably  in  a  pos- 
sessive sense)  ;  then,  by  analogy  to  a  hand  organ,  and  later  by 
association  of  hand  organ  with  monkey,  he  called  his  rubber  mon- 
key mambro,  all  within  two  years,  and  something  of  the  flux  of 
early  languages  can  be  conceived  in  this.  Too  little  and  too  much 
can  be  confused,  also  yesterday  and  tomorrow,  unsuitable  in  quan- 
tity in  one  case  and  time  not  present  in  the  other.  Abstract  rela- 
tions are  acquired  slowly.  Learn  and  teach  call  up  pictures  of 
acts.  Buying  is  imaged  as  over  the  counter.  A  parasol  blown 
about  was  a  "windy  parasol,"  and  a  stone  that  made  her  hand 
sore  was  a  very  "sore  stone."  The  child  extends  a  recognition 
sign  of  one  object  to  another  object  through  some  fancied,  often 
not  real,  resemblance ;  the  crackling  of  fire  is  called  "barking"  in 
a  childish  classification.  Dipping  bread  in  gravy  is  "bath."  Door 
was  anything  that  stopped  an  exit,  as  a  cork,  and  the  table  to  his 
high  chair.  The  tendency  is  thus  to  express  the  abstract  by  a 
concretism ;  boy  and  little  is  sometimes  mamma  and  baby,  a 
small  coin  is  a  baby  dollar.  Romaine's  daughter  pointed  out  the 
sheep  in  a  picture  as  "mamma  ba"  and  "ilda  ba,"  "too  big"  is  too 
difficult.  Darwin's  child  used  quack  for  duck  (association  ono- 
matopoeia), then  extended  this  to  water  and  to  other  fluids,  then 
used  the  word  for  all  birds  and  insects ;  resemblances  and  asso- 
ciation with  them  and  generalization  form  the  concrete.  The 
child  sees  things  together  and  thinks  that  they  are  one  thing ;  so 
docs  the  savage.  Tribes  having  no  abstract  signs  use  metaphors 
as  the  child  does,  and  our  language  has  traces  of  this  in  such 
words  as  imbecile,  which  was  weak,  originally  meaning  leaning 
on  a  staff.     "Tell  wind"  was  a  weather  vane. 

Savages  shape  new-  names  out  of  familiar  ones,  the  Aztecs 
called  a  boat  a  water  house.  Sentences  are  founded  on  the  basis 
of  early  savage  construction.  "Teacher  I  beat,  deceive,  scold, 
no,  I  love  honor,  yes,"  are  deaf-piute  and  child  expressions.  Pic- 
tures of  acts  joined  to  negatives,  shakes,  and  positive  to  nods  of 
head  (acts).  Fear,  pleasure,  pain,  discontent  and  also  content, 
misery,  gladness,  are  clearly  expressed  by  the  child  as  bodily 
comfort  and  discomfort.      From  the  scream  to  the  whine  and 

"  Logic  University  Extension  Manual,  pp.  88-94. 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  399 

whimper,  or  laugh  and  smile.  Fear  is  shown  by  hiding  the  face, 
grave  looks,  tremblings.  Suddenness  and  volume  of  sound  may 
frighten  at  first,  and  children  may  cry  at  first  hearing  a  piano. 
Animals  are  feared  when  first  seen.  What  frightened  one  child 
may  delight  another  at  about  the  same  age.  The  child  indulges 
in  angry  outbursts  when  its  raw  animal  desires  are  opposed.  Hit- 
ting out  right  and  left,  smashing,  destructive,  howling  like  the 
savage  it  is,  and  the  madman  it  may  become.  Preyer  noticed 
these  things  in  the  17th  month.  At  two  years  Darwin's  boy 
threw  things  at  those  who  opposed  him.  A  child  of  four  would 
bang  his  chair  or  his  toys,  sometimes  biting  and  threatening  them. 
A  child  becomes  angry,  resentful  and  miserable  if  another  child 
gets  something  he  wants,  but  the  imposition  of  authority  provokes 
these  storms  most.  The  child's  self,  its  appetite  and  satisfactions, 
are  the  centers  of  its  existence,  boys  more  so  than  girls,  and  some- 
times there  is  an  atrophy  of  jealousy  in  the  more  gentle  and 
affectionate.  He  enjoys  release  from  restraint,  as :  ''I  have  had 
a  nice  time;  mamma  is  sick  abed."  Want  of  sympathy  of  chil- 
dren is  caused  by  absence  of  experience  or  realization  of  others' 
suffering.  Teasing  and  cruelty  are  inherent.  Children  are  fond 
of  what  they  can  boss  or  tyrannize  over — cats,  dogs,  chickens,  or 
each  other.  These  pander  to  their  feeling  of  self-importance. 
Children  secrete  things,  adopt  ruses,  or  act  lies.  They  flatter  and 
love  to  escape  punishment,  or  to  get  what  they  want.  Vanity  is 
vast  in  children.  Child  morality  is  inconsistent  and  wanting  in 
intensity.  It  is  half  formed  and  some  traits  tend  to  choke  the 
others.  Education  alone  organizes,  completes  and  regulates  the 
propensities. 

The  cruelty  of  children  is  that  of  savages,  and  the  vivid 
imaginations  of  youngsters  is  exactly  that  of  the  early  ages,  when 
boastfulness  and  excessive  vanity  abounded,  when  fairy  tales  were 
believed  in  by  adults,  and  ghost  stories  frightened  entire  villages, 
and  rank  superstition  controlled  entire  nations.  The  disposition 
to  lie  is  an  innate  instinct  of  the  child,  and  represents  the  age  that 
still  prevails  among  Oriental  people  when  and  with  whom  the 
advantages  of  telling  the  truth  have  not  been  learned.  Every 
child  is  a  natural  born  thief,  he  cannot  understand  why  he  should 
not  take  anything  he  sees  or  wants,  but  realizes  that  he  must  not 


400  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

be  caught  stealing,  and  these  propensities  vary  in  degrees  both 
among  children  and  races.  For  example,  one  child  or  one  race 
may  be  disposed  to  lie,  but  not  inclined  very  much  to  steal ;  the 
propensity  to  cruelty,  to  murder,  may  also  be  similarly  developed 
where  truthfulness  and  respect  for  the  rights  of  others  may  exist. 
This  shows  that  what  are  usually  grouped  under  the  head  of  vir- 
tues may  be  wholly  separate  matters  of  expediency.  One  child 
may  be  cruel,  but  not  mean  in  other  respects;  another  may  lie 
and  not  be  cruel,  or  may  not  steal ;  one  may  be  naturally  indis- 
posed to  any  of  these  propensities,  while  a  defective  may  combine 
all  the  shortcomings  of  a  remote  ancestry,  above  whose  mental 
status  he  has  failed  to  develop.  The  mischievousness  of  the 
young  resembles  that  of  the  monkeys,  and  their  destructiveness  is 
also  that  of  monkeys  and  some  madmen.  The  emotionalism  of  a 
child  and  undue  response  to  slight  causes  are  like  those  of  our 
remote  ancestry,  a  survival  of  which  can  be  observed  in  camp 
meetings  and  among  untrained  people  generally.  The  love  of 
jingle  and  rhyme,  mere  sound  without  sense,  is  an  infantile  and 
barbarous  inclination.  Among  children  of  all  races  and  negro 
adults  there  is  admiration  for  resounding  words  and  mystery,  and 
the  meaning  of  the  words  or  the  reasonableness  of  the  mystery 
appear  to  be  of  no  consequence.  The  curiosity  of  the  child  is  of 
a  low  animal  nature  which  contents  itself  with  mere  surprise,  and 
seldom  goes  further  than  a  very  superficial  inquiry  into  causes, 
or  is  satisfied  with  very  shallow  explanations.  The  imitative  ten- 
dency of  the  child  is  seen  in  games  in  some  of  which  the  manners 
and  customs  of  long-forgotten  people  have  been  preserved ;  for 
example,  counting  out  games  are  handed  down  from  the  days  of 
human  sacrifice,  when  the  priests  selected  those  who  were  to  be 
killed,  and  the  game  of  tag  has  come  down  from  mimicry  of  the 
capture  of  prisoners,  the  tag  being  a  symbol  to  indicate  the  one 
who  was  to  be  killed  or  to  be  taken  prisoner.  Children,  savages 
and  degenerates  give  nicknames  and  incline  to  tattooing  the  skin. 
The  ability  to  climb  trees,  romp,  caper  and  squabble  is  the  child's 
inheritance  from  its  monkey-like  ancestry,  and  the  liking  to  dig 
caves  and  hide  in  them,  to  be  able  to  rush  out  and  surprise  the 
helpless,  to  gather  plunder  in  them,  and  talk  over  plans  of  con- 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND.  4OI 

quest,  go  back  to  troglodyte  days,  when  stone-age  men  often  lived 
in  natural  cavities  in  the  earth. 

Cultivated  childhood  often  fails  to  show  some  of  the  early 
aboriginal  traits  so  well,  because  they  are  modified  and  abridged. 
Cope's  law  of  acceleration  comes  in  to  make  the  civilized  young- 
ster pass  through  his  ultra-animal  and  savage  days  quicker  than 
was  the  case  with  previous  generations.  But  compare  children  of 
the  purlieus,  with  their  ferocity,  quick  instincts  and  ape-like  man- 
ners, nearly  as  bad  as  those  of  the  children  of  savages  who  should 
be  even  more  ape-like  than  the  civilized  children,  though  savages 
menace  their  offspring  so  much  as  to  intensify  the  natural  fear 
transmitted  by  animal  ancestry,  and  the  majority  of  savages  are 
cowardly  in  some  respects,  particularly  in  the  dark,  notwithstand- 
ing romances  tO'  the  contrary.  Youthful  embezzlers  of  about 
nineteen  and  under  are  frequent.  At  this  time  reason  is  not 
strongly  enough  developed  to  resist  temptation.  It  is  difficult  to 
apply  the  experience  of  others,  but  it  is  best  to  be  lenient  and  to 
instruct  children  against  such  dangers.  Man  being  by  nature  a 
thief,  it  is  not  till  riper  years  that  he  can  steal  with  judgment  and 
on  a  large  scale.  The  youngster  has  not  learned  full  expediency 
nor  the  difference  between  petty  thefts  and  syndicate  robbery  on 
a  vast  scale.  The  acquisition  of  a  broader  intelligence  enables 
him  to  steal  according  to  the  rules  of  the  game  as  played  in  civil- 
ized communities.  A  much  broader  intellect  teaches  him  to  de- 
spise theft,  even  of  the  safer  and  greater  kind. 

W.  T.  Ham^-  says:  "The  orphaned  and  outcast  child  be- 
comes precociously  world  wise.  But  the  school  can  scarcely  re- 
claim the  gamin  from  the  streets  of  Paris  or  New  York.  He  has 
become  as  cunning  and  self-helpful  as  the  water  rat,  but  not  in 
ethical  or  spiritual  methods.  He  should  have  been  held  back 
from  the  bitter  lessons  of  life  by  the  shielding  hand  of  the  family. 
He  would  then  have  become  a  positive  influence  for  civilization  in 
its  height  and  depth.  As  a  gamin  he  can  live  a  life  only  a  little 
above  that  of  the  water  rat,  and  is  fitted  only  to  feed  the  fires 
of  revolution."  Victor  Hugo,  in  Les  Miserables,  gives  a  picture 
of  the  gamin's  life,  and  shows  his  genesis  through  neglect  of 
family  care  in  infancy.     Little  Garroche  and  his  two  brothers,  a 

"  Psychologic  Foundations  of  Education,  p.  144. 


402  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

solemn  and  pathetic  history!  Undisciplined  youngsters  are  apt 
to  be  brutal,  and  later  the  world  has  to  kick  them  into  shape, 
which  it  does  in  the  most  vigorous  way.  Parents  who  indulge 
and  spoil  their  children,  and  who  are  too  tender  with  them  to  re- 
prove or  punish  them  for  bad  behavior,  allow  their  offspring  to 
develop  their  native  animality  and  savagery,  and  this  results  in 
greater  suffering  to  the  indulged  child,  because  the  world  is  sure 
to  heap  up  abuse,  corporeal  and  mental,  which  the  parents  could 
have  averted  by  enlightened  correction.  Children  feel  happier 
when  c®ntrolled  and  regulated,  and  they  admit  it,  whereas  ab- 
sence of  control  makes  them  miserable  and  causes  them  to  hate 
themslves .  and  all  about  them.  Some  parents  regard  their  chil- 
dren as  too  good  to  punish,  and  wonder  finally  that  these  "perfect 
ones"  should  develop  into  beasts. 

Intractable  children  refuse  to  take  the  advice  of  parents,  but 
later,  when  the  results  of  their  disobedience  appear,  they  willingly 
permit  the  parents  to  bear  the  consequences.  Spencer,  in  his 
"Education,"  points  out  the  necessity  of  having  children  experi- 
ence the  effects  of  their  offenses,  as  where  a  toy  is  replaced  when 
destroyed,  or  where  the  father  comes  to  the  financial  rescue  of  a 
spendthrift  son,  the  incentives  to  carefulness  and  thrift  are  absent. 

The  native  selfishness  of  indulged  children  crops  out  disa- 
greeably often  in  the  best  of  them,  as  where  they  have  been 
shielded  and  provided  for  carefully,  and  they  may  be  fairly  re- 
spectful in  return,  but  when  parents  become  dependent  on  the 
children  the  latter  often  grow  abusive,  and  have  been  known  to 
turn  their  parents  into  the  street. 

The  order  in  which  mental  traits  develop  from  childhood  to 
age  are:  Perception,  memory,  imagination,  emotionalism,  imper- 
fect reasoning,  better  reasoning,  less  emotionalism,  and  the  moral 
traits  are  last.  As  evidence  of  self-consciousness  being  slow  to 
appear,  Preyer's  infant  bit  his  own  arm,  though  not  recognizing  it 
as  part  of  himself.  But  the  child  is  a  born  diplomat  often,  as  in 
the  combination  of  a  large  and  small  apple  and  a  little  boy,  who 
says  to  a  little  girl :  ''Are  you  greedy?"  "No."  ''Then  you  can 
have  the  first  choice."  The  trickiness,  cunning,  the  ability  to 
conspire,  scheme,  swindle,  are  not  at  all  exalted  faculties,  for  the 


DEVELOPMENT    OF    THE    MIND. 


403 


youngest  child  and  the  meanest  savage  have  all  these  traits  inborn 
and  ready  to  exercise. 

Jules  Simon  says  that  "the  nation  with  the  best  schools  is  the 
first  nation  in  the  world,"  but  pedagogy  has  a  long  road  before  it 
will  evolve  to  an  application  of  Spencer's  and  Schopenhauer's 
conceptions  of  methods  of  instruction.  Spencer  urges  the  ac- 
quirement of  learning  that  is  most  directly  helpful  in  getting  a 
living,  and  postponing  the  ornamental  studies  till  later  years. 
Schopenhauer  divides  studies  into  the  direct,  or  natural,  with  ob- 
ject lessons,  and  the  artificial,  through  books,  which  impart  gen- 
eral ideas  before  concrete  facts  are  sufficiently  accumulated  and 
memorized.  The  youth  is  crammed  with  mistaken  general  no- 
tions, which  he  finds  harmful  more  than  helpful  when  he  tries  to 
apply  them  after  leaving  school,  through  not  being  taught  to  think 
for  himself.  To  acquire  a  knowledge  of  the  world,  Schopenhauer 
considers  as  the  aim  of  all  education,  and  he  lays  stress  upon  be- 
ginning this  knowledge  at  the  right  end,  that  observation  should 
precede  general  ideas  and  that  narrow  ideas  should  precede  those 
of  a  wide  range.  But,  as  Huxley  says,  education  begins  in  the 
cradle  and  through  every  day  of  life,  and  if  a  person  did  not 
acquire  more  education  out  of  school  than  in  it,  he  would  be 
unable  to  cross  a  street  without  being  run  over.  One  of  the  most 
important  items  of  pernicious  educational  influence  Schopen- 
hauer^^ dilates  on  is  the  average  novel.  In  learning  the  ways  of 
the  world  which  are  so  important  for  the  youth  to  know,  "the  dif- 
ficulty is  doubled  by  novels  which  represent  a  state  of  things  in 
life  and  the  world,  such  as  in  fact  does  not  exist.  Youth  is  credu- 
lous and  accepts  those  views  of  life  which  then  become  part  and 
parcel  of  the  mind ;  so  that  instead  of  a  merely  negative  condition 
of  ignorance,  you  have  positive  error,  a  whole  tissue  of  false 
notions  to  start  with,  and  at  a  later  date  these  actually  spoil  the 
schooling  of  experience  and  put  a  wrong  construction  on  the  les- 
sons it  teaches.  If  before  this  the  youth  had  no  light  at  all  to 
guide  him,  he  is  now  misled  by  a  will-o'-the-wisp;  still  more 
often  is  this  the  case  with  the  girl.  They  have  both  had  a  false 
view  of  life  foisted  on  them  by  reading  novels,  and  expectations 
have  been  aroused  that  never  can  be  fulfilled.      This  generally 

"  Studies  in  Pessimism,  Education. 


404  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

exercises  a  baneful  influence  on  their  whole  life.  In  this  respect 
those  whose  youth  has  allowed  them  no  time  or  opportunity  for 
reading  novels,  those  who  work  with  their  hands,  and  the  like,  are 
in  a  position  of  decided  advantage." 

If  what  is  false  in  novels  were  explained  to  children  it  might 
answer  to  let  them  read  anything,  but  where  it  is  possible  to  select 
their  reading  it  is  far  best  to  direct  their  ideas  wholesomely  and 
healthfully,  by  proper  books. 

The  writings  of  Charles  Reade,  Dickens,  W.  Clarke  Russell 
direct  attention  to  necessary  reforms  in  institutions  and  in  society 
generally.  Incidentally  people  acquire  reform  information  reluc- 
tantly, they  do  not  like  to  hear  of  disagreeable  matters,  such  as 
cruelties,  demagoguism  and  official  rascality.  When  Dickens  and 
others  teach  such  things  the  world  is  the  gainer,  but  it  has  to  be 
amused  into  a  knowledge  of  the  ills  of  the  world  and  taught  as 
kindergarten  children  through  interesting  and  not  over-exerting 
attention.  Direct  statements  of  reform  matters,  of  necessity, 
would  not  be  read  or  understood.  Then  the  ''novel  with  a  pur- 
pose" must  be  skillfully  disguised  as  such  to  be  read  at  all.  Peo- 
ple take  alarm  at  the  idea  of  being  instructed  by  stealth,  and  as  a 
rule  the  "novel  with  a  purpose"  has  to  be  written  by  a  master 
hand  to  be  tolerated,  and,  unfortunately,  the  bulk  of  such  novels 
are  written  by  uninformed  persons,  and  the  purpose  itself  is  too 
frequently  bigotry  or  cant.  Mark  Twain  will,  in  all  future  ages» 
be  recognized  as  one  who  educated  his  readers  to  important,  yes, 
vital,  matters,  while  amusing  them.  There  is-  no  more  potent 
argument  than  good-natured  ridicule.  The  pathos  of  his  Joan  of 
Arc,  his  Gilded  Age  and  Prince  and  Pauper  affects  all  who  read 
those  works.  Innocents  Abroad  has  brushed  away  the  cobwebs 
of  superstition  from  legions  of  brains,  and  in  many  such  ways 
this  genial  author  has  helped  his  fellow-man  and  the  world  is  the 
better  for  his  having  lived.  This  mention  is  quite  appropriate  to 
a  chapter  on  Development  of  the  Brain. 


CHAPTER  XII. 
EVOLUTION  OF  THE  BRAIN. 

Some  savages  found  a  chronometer  and  loyally  gave  it  to 
their  chief,  who  consulted  his  priest  as  to  its  nature.  The  tick- 
ing'and  movements  warranted  the  holy  man  in  the  belief  that  it 
lived ;  hence  the  watch  must  have  been  made  by  the  Great  Spirit. 

But  it  was  noticed  that  the  hands  revolved  in  time  with  the 
sun's  path  in  the  sky.  A  speculative  fellow  suggested  the  pos- 
sibility of  the  wheel  motions  being  the  cause  of  this  and  it  became 
necessary  to  behead  him  to  prevent  the  spread  of  such  hetero- 
doxy, for  religious  authority  had  started  the  legend  that  the 
spirit  of  the  watch  was  sufficient  to  cause  all  it  was  seen  and 
heard  to  do.  Someway  the  idea  was  not  killed,  if  the  man  had 
been,  and  soon  the  priests  assented  to  the  dead  man's  claim,  and 
it  became  a  superstition  to  think  otherwise ;  thus  illustrating  that 
""'religion  is  superstition  in  fashion,  and  superstition  is  religion 
out  of  fashion." 

Another  had  the  hardihood  of  a  Harvey  in  declaring  that  the 
balance  wheel  and  hair  spring  moved  the  wheels.  A  religious 
war  was  suppressed  by  the  prompt  cremation  of  this  pundit,  and 
later  allegations  of  the  kind  were  argued  by  feeding  the  allegator 
to  the  alligators,  by  imprisonment,  or  by  ostracism. 

Finally  the  main  spring  was  suggested  as  the  originator  of  the 
watch  spirit ;  but  the  triumphant  query  of  the  priests  was :  "What 
is  the  force  that  moves  the  main  spring?"  When  the  watch  ran 
down  it  was  said  to  have  died,  and  the  spiritites  jeered  at  the 
dissectors  who  tried  to  demonstrate  the  main  spring  sufficiency. 
Granting  that  the  force  did  lie  in  that  part,  how  can  you  expect 
to  catch  the  mind,  the  soul,  that  has  gone  from  it?  Thereafter 
when  a  dusky  thinker  tried  to  demonstrate  to  his  brother  savages 

405 


Ao6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  nature  of  tension,  by  holding  down  a  bough  and  allowing  it 
to  spring  back,  some  complained  that  thinking  made  the  head 
ache,  others  that  the  comparison  was  sacrilegious,  and  still  others 
that  this  sort  of  nonsense  did  not  gain  them  food  and  it  was  best 
to  keep  out  of  scrapes  by  deferring  to  kingly  and  priestly  author- 
ity— the  safe  position  of  mediocrity. 

The  watch  is  man,  its  ticks  his  heart  beats ;  and  from  prehis- 
toric times  the  contest  over  his  nature  has  been  as  to  what  he  was^ 
his  whence  and  whither.  That  his  muscles  by  contracting  moved 
the  bones  was  damnable  heresy;  that  the  blood  circulated,  that 
the  nerves  controlled  the  muscles  were  assertions  offensive  to 
religion  and  "common  sense." 

Ignorance  imprisoned  Galileo  and  Roger  Bacon,  harassed 
Copernicus,  burned  Giordano  Bruno  and  Servetus  and  made 
hypocrites  of  Kepler  and  Tycho  Brahe  for  their  mechanical  ideas* 
of  nature.  Knowledge  has  wrested  the  faggot  and  torch  from 
Ignorance,  but  he  and  his  offspring.  Superstition,  still  live,  and 
whosoever  dares  to  think  for  himself  finds  their  power  abound- 
ing in  society,  in  the  church,  and  among  lawmakers  and  law 
administrators. 

That  man  should  be  studied  objectively  as  we  would  a  beetle, 
a  tree  or  a  watch  startles  us  when  the  suggestion  is  first  heard, 
for  in  our  conceit,  dating  everything  to  and  from  ourselves, 
wrapped  in  our  savage  egotism,  we  can  conceive  of  nothing 
greater  than  man  and  must  needs  build  an  anthropomorphic 
deity ;  we  build  God  in  our  own  image  and  imagine  him  a  Big 
Man. 

The  olden  metaphysical,  essentially  the  theological,  method 
of  studying  mind  wholly  ignored  the  body,  scoffed  at  the  possi- 
bility of  brain  having  anything  to  do  with  thought,  reason,  feel- 
ing, sensation,  etc.  That  there  was  such  a  thing  as  an  orderly, 
decent  law  in  nature  was  a  conception  of  very  slow  growth  in  the 
evolution  of  thought.  Everything  was  supposed  to  be  under  the 
direct  control  of  a  capricious  higher  power.  Step  by  step  the 
mechanical  laws  that  controlled  the  stars,  the  planets,  the  earth, 
were  established,  but  plants,  animals  and  man  were  separated 
off,  as  under  special  laws,  and  this  is  the  first  phase  of  dualism ; 
two  methods  of  control :  direct  from  God  for  the  animate,  indirect 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  407 

through  nature  for  the  inanimate.  Plants  and  animals  were 
successively  wrested  from  the  direct  control  dogma,  but  man 
himself  was  held  to  be  exempt  from  natural  laws  until  his  make- 
up was  carefully  examined,  and  now  we  find  that  while  his  gen- 
eral anatomy  is  conceded  to  be  similar  to  that  of  the  beasts ;  his 
muscles,  bones,  blood  vessels  and  tissues  generally,  the  theologic- 
ally biased  entrenched  themselves  behind  superficial  differences 
between  the  appearances  of  the  brain  of  man  and  that  of  animals. 

In  vain  has  it  been  demonstrated  that  there  is  not  a  single 
feature  in  the  human  brain  that  may  not  be  shown  to  exist  in  the 
brains  of  apes — dualists  will  not  concede  the  possibility  of  ana- 
tomical resemblances  affecting  their  position  where  previously 
they  defied  production  of  the  proof  of  such  resemblances. 

The  olden  philosophers  adopted  the  introspective  or  subjective 
method  of  mental  study.  Practically  they  shut  their  eyes,  put 
cotton  in  their  ears  and  endeavored  to  think  out  the  nature  of 
mind,  and  their  ramblings  are  worthy  of  their  methods. 

The  physiological  or  objective  study  gave  most,  promise  early 
in  this  century  and  David  Hartley,  a  disciple  of  Locke,  was  one 
of  the  ablest  of  the  physiological  pioneers  in  the  realms  of  sensa- 
tion and  mind.  Bain,  Herbert  Spencer  and  Wundt  are  the  most 
notable  of  our  day. 

Nature  is  the  only  thing  worth  studying  for  the  simple  reason 
that  there  is  nothing  but  nature  in  the  universe.  By  the  merest 
glance  at  the  habits  of  lower  animals  man  is  enabled  to  see  his 
own  instincts  and  even  the  workings  of  his  intellect  in  their 
simplest  expression.  Man  loves,  hates,  grieves,  enjoys.  So  does 
the  dog.  Every  animal,  including  man,  moves  about  in  search  of 
food,  grows  and  may  propagate  his  kind.  The  mind  is  the  sensory 
part  of  psychic  and  physical  nature,  the  motor  part  of  mind,  and 
the  unconscious  factors  are  customarily  neglected  in  regarding 
what  is  commonly  called  the  mind. 

A  good  crus  is  necessary  to  a  good  brain,  so  the  motor  part 
is  essential  to  intelligence  and  large  crura  are  evidences  of  a 
good  cerebral  output;  that  is,  the  individual  has  extra  means  of 
exploding  his  impressions. 

Savage^  says  that  "as  long  as  the  mind  is  supposed  to  be 

^  On  Insanity,  p.  i. 


408  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

located  in  the  skull  we  shall  make  little  progress;  we  must  be 
more  general  in  our  pathology  if  we  are  to  understand  our  sub- 
ject." 

Not  only  is  there  a  relationship  between  all  that  is  done  by 
the  body  and  mind  of  man  and  other  animals,  and  the  behavior 
of  chemical  elements,  but  the  former  depends  upon  the  latter,  and 
is  merely  a  different  expression  of  the  same  thing.  We  think  and 
move  about  because  nitrogen  tends  to  escape  from  molecular 
combinations,  and  oxygen,  on  the  contrary,  seeks  to  unite  with 
them ;  and,  for  similar  reasons,  we  are  born,  eat,  grow,  reproduce 
and  die.  Because  of  the  disposition  like  and  unlike  elementary 
atoms  have  to  unite  to  form  molecules  we  hunger  and  love — the 
two  feelings  that  control  the  world,  as  Schiller  poetically  affirms. 
An  application  of  chemistry  can  even  explain  why  one  of  these 
feelings  may  sacrifice  the  other. 

The  affinity  of  atoms  for  one  another  may  be  taken  as  the 
cause  of  hunger;  the  higher  affections  may  be  shown  to  have 
sprung  from  hunger  by  positive  illustrations ;  and,  finally,  it  can 
be  shown  that  the  insane  often  merge  every  higher  desire  into 
acquisitiveness,  or  a  beastly  food  hunger ;  or  that  by  mind  degen- 
eration atavism,  or  its  failure  to  develop,  in  certain  respects,  be- 
yond savagery,  every  regard  for  virtue,  honor,  love,  even  self- 
respect,  may  be  lost  in  the  craving  for  money,  which  represents 
the  means  of  animal  gratification. 

Nor  is  this  knowledge  useless,  for  it  bids  you  lift  yourself 
above  bartering  the  best  part  of  you,  sentiment  and  honor,  for  a 
price.  It  tells  you  that  you  may  pay  too  dearly  for  peace  and 
comfort  by  insuring  for  yourself  and  progeny  moral  death.  From 
these  and  similar  considerations  we  may  conceive  cf  the  founda- 
tion and  some  of  the  superstructure  of  a  practical  psychology 
based  upon  chemistry. 

A  teacher  of  science,  with  chemistry  and  physics  as  argu- 
ments, cannot  appeal  to  the  metaphysicians  nor  the  theologians 
who  are  usually  unprovided  with  elementary  knowledge  of  mun- 
dane things.  But  they  will  deny  that  it  is  necessary  to  know 
chemistry  or  natural  science  to  deal  with  theology  or  meta- 
physics. True  enough,  but  as  the  natural  sciences  now  include 
not  only  what  concerns  man  but  his  mind  and  social  relations,  it 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  409 

follows  that  the  theologian  and  metaphysician  never  can,  as  such, 
fathom  psychology  and  that  their  methods  cannot  deal  with  the 
mind. 

If  they  treat  of  subjective  phenomena  they  are  in  the  plight 
of  a  clock  that  would  call  the  jars  of  its  cog  wheels,  spirit,  mind, 
thought.  If  objective  matters  are  considered  by  them,  their 
methods  are  those  of  the  savage  who  studies  the  wheezes,  puffs, 
snorts,  whistlings,  rattle,  groan  of  a  locomotive,  observes  its 
wheels  revolve,  its  surprising  speed,  and,  content  with  knowing 
what  it  does,  is  incapable  of  understanding  the  how  and  why, 
because  not  accustomed  to  analyze  machinery  or  comprehend  its 
principles.  The  savage  assigns  a  spirit  to  the  engine,  as  the 
dualist  does  to  man,  and  both  are  satisfied  that  all  things  are 
thus  explained.  It  seems  astonishing  the  belief  could  survive  to- 
day that  mind  exists  independent  of  its  organ,  the  brain,  or  that 
it  is  useless  to  study  the  mechanism  of  thought  because  of  a 
superstitious  fancy  that  there  is  some  tertium  quid  that  can  never 
be  apprehended. 

Yellowlees  says  that  the  brain  of  the  scoundrel  cannot  be  told 
from  that  of  a  Christian  hero,  nor  that  of  the  sane  from  the 
insane.  Such  sweeping  claims  have  come  to  be  greatly  modified, 
as  much  depends  on  the  method  of  examination,  and  granting 
the  truth  of  the  assertion  in  many  cases,  it  should  tell  us  that 
circumstances  working  upon  identical  materials  may  create  for- 
tunate and  unfortunate,  the  law-abiding  and  the  criminal.  As  for 
insanity  the  chemist  has  begun  to  examine  the  contents  of  the 
blood  vessels  to  see  if  insanity  is  not  in  many  cases  merely  a  poi- 
soned brain  circulation. 

If  we  could  get  out  of  ourselves  and  regard  everything  objec- 
tively, unbiased  by  our  feelings  and  the  familiarity  that  blinds 
and  deludes,  we  would  be  able  to  conceive  this  planet  reduced  to 
the  size  of  a  hickory  nut,  upon  whose  surface  a  magnifying  appa- 
ratus would  reveal  lesser  specs  changing  places,  forms  and  col- 
ors. Further  magnification  would  show  us  man  looking  like  a 
period,  growing  to  the  stature  of  an  exclamation  point  (probably 
a  theist),  or  an  interrogation  point  (probably  a  scientist).  From 
these  spring  other  dots,  and  the  larger  ones  dissolve.  All  move 
about,  some  collide,  others  cling  together,  still  others  avoid  one 


4IO 


THE    EVOLUTIOX    OP^    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 


another.  These  simple  movements,  further  inspection  tells  us, 
are  caused  by  position  changes  effected  by  the  more  intimate  par- 
ticles that  compose  the  small  objects. 

Allowing  the  world  with  its  flora  and  fauna  to  regain  its  nat- 
ural size  and  placing  a  man  under  our  powerful  microscope  until 
he  appears  to  be  as  large  as  the  earth,  we  learn  that  all  the  grosser 
movements  he  has  made  were  occasioned  by  the  collision,  cling- 
ing together,  movements  of  avoidance  and  other  place  changes  on 
the  part  of  little  spheres  like  bird  shot  and  cricket  balls,  known 
as  atoms  and  molecules.  A  very  close  and  constant  arrangement 
of  these  elementary  balls  constitute  his  bones,  which  are  pulled 
to  and  fro  by  the  sidewise  and  lengthwise  rush  of  similar  balls 
not  so  compactly  arranged,  which  form  the  muscles.  Great  nerve 
cables  of  millet-seed  like  grains,  here  and  there  rapidly  crowd 
one  another,  in  turn  producing  commotion  among  the  muscle 
components.  But  it  is  difficult  to  discern  which  is  cause  or  effect 
in  all  this  swirl.  The  big  balls  strike  the  little  ones  and  start 
them  agog,  the  little  ones  retaliate,  to  be  in  turn  hit  at  by  the 
larger.  In  fact  cause  and  effect  exchange  places,  and  everything 
this  bag  of  millet-seed,  bird  shot  and  cricket  balls  does  depends 
upon  the  preponderance  of  one  kind  of  molecules  over  the  others, 
and  an  endless  series  of  accidents. 

Here,  for  example,  was  an  oxygen  atom  jerking  away  from 
less  congenial  company  to  seize  upon  two  hydrogen  atoms,  the 
three  balls  then  becoming  known  as  a  molecule  of  water,  countless 
groups  of  which  could  be  seen  everywhere  in  our  giant.  Many 
of  these  H2O  groups  were  very  exclusively  associating  only  with 
their  own  kind  and  repelling  the  advances  of  other  molecules 
which  sought  their  company ;  but  here  and  there  one  of  the 
objectionable  molecules  happened  to  meet  with  some  atoms  it 
wanted  and  could  capture  and,  presto,  metamorphosis.  The  for- 
merly repulsive  A,  which  B  avoided,  picked  up  an  X  and  no  time 
was  lost  before  ABX  became  a  new  molecular  candidate  for  the 
envy,  sycophancy  and  wiles  of  others.  This  X  was  often  a  metal- 
lic atom. 

Restoring  our  man  to  his  less  than  six  feet  in  height,  his 
molecular  make-up  disappeared  and  we  find  that  accidents  of 
atomic   grouping  make  this   particular  person   present   an   ugly 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  4II 

appearance.  His  comrades  with  more  pleasing  visages  are  not 
attracted  to  him;  women  deride  and. repel  him.  Chance  fills  his 
pockets  with  the  element  aurum,  and  a  change  occurs  compara- 
ble to  the  one  noted  before.  His  acquisition  enables  him  to  select 
whom  he  pleases  as  associates.  One  known  as  Fool  and  another 
called  Knave  became  gilded  and  secured  the  sisters  Cupidity, 
who,  though  detesting  their  mates,  helped  them  to  multiply  their 
kind.  These  comparisons  are  not  strained.  There  is  more  than 
simile  or  metaphor  in  them.  If  a  house  be  built  of  bricks  does 
not  the  pile  of  bricks  preserve  the  individual  brick  nature?  Be- 
cause it  is  a  house  it  is  none  the  less  a  brick  pile,  with  all  the 
properties,  such  as  hardness,  porosity,  uninflammability,  con- 
tained in  each  separate  brick.  Grouping  of  atoms  into  molecules 
and  these  into  compound  molecules  do  not  make  such  combina- 
tions any  the  less  chemical,  even  though  man  is  the  thing  built 
from  the  molecules. 

We  may  start  with  the  simple  one-celled  animal  called  the 
amoeba.  It  is  a  representative  of  the  modified  cell  that  is  found 
to  produce,  by  multiplication  of  itself,  all  animal  tissues.  The 
muscles,  membranes,  skin,  etc.,  of  man  are  made  up  of  cell  upon 
cell  of  protoplasmic  origin,  closely  allied  to  this  unicellular  or- 
ganism, and  the  white  blood  corpuscles  are  called  amoeboid  be- 
cause they  resemble  the  amoebae  surprisingly  in  all  things. 

This  amoeba  may  be  found,  under  the  microscope,  in  stagnant 
water,  damp  earth,  or  in  animal  matter,  creeping  about  with 
activity,  but  no  constancy  of  direction.  It  seems  to  be  a  living 
speck  of  white  of  egg;  the  minute  granules  in  it  flowing  first  to 
one  part,  then  another;  pushing  out  "false  feet"  into  which  the 
entire  mass  flows,  and  so  moves  about.  When  it  encounters 
food,  usually  minute  vegetable  particles,  the  substance  passes  into 
the  animal  composition,  and  what  cannot  be  assimilated  is  merely 
moved  away  from — excreted. 

Insignificant  as  these  amoebic  motions  appear,  they  are 
weighted  with  the  most  important  problems  life  can  present,  for 
the  quarrel  is  over  what  causes  amoebae  to  move  at  all.  Cope 
and  others  assign  it  to  consciousness,  or  will  power.  Low  forms 
of  life,  like  this,  may  be  kept  dried  and  apparently  dead,  indefin- 


412  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

itely,  but  moisture  restores  activity.  Of  itself  this  fact  shows  the 
mechanical  nature  of  life. 

The  main  composition  of  the  protoplasm  of  the  amoeba,  is 
carbon,  hydrogen,  oxygen  and  nitrogen,  represented  by  the  sym- 
bols C,  H,  O,  N.  It  feeds  upon  plants  which  contain  similar  ele- 
ments. In  fact,  it  eats  that  to  which  it  is  chemically  attracted. 
Its  hunger,  then,  is  chemical  affinity.  Assimilation,  eating,  is  a 
process  of  molecular  exchange,  chemical  saturation.  Hydrogen 
hungers  for  oxygen.  The  amoebic  protoplasm  molecules  CHON 
hunger  for  CHON.^ 

We  have  gained  our  first  step  in  mental  science.  A  feeling,  a 
desire,  is  reduced  to  a  chemical  explanation.  Remember  it,  for 
upon  it  every  subsequent  step  depends : 

1.  Hunger  is  chemical  affinity,  the  desire  inherent  in  atoms 
for  one  another.  Hunger  is  the  first,  the  primitive  desire,  so 
acknowledged  by  thinkers  from  other  points  of  view,  but  they 
did  not  see  what  we  now  claim  to  be  its  origin.  Growth  of  the 
mass  must  follow  as  the  molecules  add  to  their  number,  size  and 
weight,  by  chemical  combinations ;  by  eating.  This  is  evident 
and  axiomatic,  but  simple  as  it  appears,  like  a  geometrical  axiom 
it  is  liable  to  be  obscured  or  lost  sight  of  as  we  advance. 

Growth,  thus,  is  our  second  step  gained : 

2.  Growth  arises  from  chemical  saturation,  from  hunger 
satisfaction,  from  eating.  This  is  more  evident  than  i,  in  all  ani- 
mal life. 

Next  the  amoeba  reproduces  itself  by  the  simplest  possible 

^  So  much  depends  and  could  be  said  upon  this  inference,  it  can  be  but 
cursorily  dealt  with  here.  The  objection  to  the  atomic  affinity  likeness  of 
hunger  being  in  that  protoplasm  converts  dead  into  living  molecules,  may 
be  met  by  Hoppe-Seyler's  claim  (Chemical-Physiology  Institute  Inaugural 
Address)  that  living  protoplasm  consisted  of  anhydrous  oxy-hydro-carbon 
molecules  capable  of  motion  in  a  hydrated  medium.  When  such  molecules 
combined  with  the  water  in  which  they  moved,  then  the  protoplasm  was 
dead.  Living  protoplasm  is  like  quantities  of  CHON  moving  in  water: 
H2O;  now  if  CHON,  in  certain  quantities,  becomes 'CHONH2O  (while  the 
symbolism  is  far  from  being  exact),  an  idea  of  what  occurs  when  pro- 
toplasm dies  (the  machine  stoppage)  may  be  gained.  The  next  step 
toward  dissolution  being  the  breaking  up  of  the  compound  altogether;  the 
dismantling  of  the  machine.  But  it  is  impossible  to  go  deeply  into  such 
matters  in  popular  essays. 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  4I5 

means,  it  divides  as  a  consequence  of  overgrowth,  and  we  then 
have  two  amoebae;  the  new  additional  form  is  excreted  off  from 
the  old  one,  and  observing  that  such  particles  as  silica  or  lime 
carbonate,  which  it  cannot  take  up  are  repelled,  rejected,  excreted^ 
we  find  as  a  consequence  that  excretion  depends  upon,  or  is ; 

a,  chemical  indifference  or  repulsion, 

b,  a  consequence  of  assimilation, 

c,  an  overgrowth  consequence,  in  reproduction. 

3.  Excretion  is  a  consequence  of  hunger  satisfaction. 

4.  Reproduction  is  a  consequence  of  growth,  and  a  process 
of  excretion. 

The  amceba  absorbs  oxygen  and  exhales  carbonic  acid;  it 
breathes.  But  oxygen  is  a  food,  and  inhalation  is  but  a  process  of 
assimilation,  hence  breathing  is  eating  and  proposition  i  includes 
it.  The  rejected,  exhaled  carbonic  acid  is  excreted;  so  proposi- 
tion 3  includes  that  matter. 

Prehension,  or  taking  hold  of  its  food  is  another  function, 
but  it  is  only  an  effect  of  i ;  attraction  of  molecules.  The  amoeba 
moves  about,  but  the  same  molecular  attractions  account  for  such 
movements  partly;  light  sets  up  a  series  of  attractive  motions  in 
it;  heat  increases  within  certain  limits  its  activity;  eddies  move 
it,  and  the  simplest  explanation  of  light  and  heat  attraction  would 
be  through  their  expanding  the  nearest  portion  acted  upon,  set- 
ting up  a  flow  of  granules  into  that  part,  resulting  in  a  forward 
movement  toward  the  light.  The  composition  of  forces  would 
account  even  for  its  occasionally  moving  away  from  its  food, 
thus : 

Let  A  represent  the  position  of  the  amoeba  at  one  instant ;  the 
line  A  C  the  direction,  and  force,  lo,  of  attraction  of  a  ray  of 
heat  and  light.  The  line  A  B,  at  right  angles  to  AC,  with  the 
attraction  5  of  a  diatom,  or  some  other  molecular  combination 
which  is  food  and  has  attractive  affinity  for  the  amoeba.  The 
parallelogram  of  forces  will  decide  D  to  be  the  direction  in  which 
A  will  move ;  apparently  away  from  its  food. 

These  motions  can  be  made  more  complex  by  the  inconstancy 
of  environment,  heat,  light,  electricity,  sound,  chemism,  eddies, 
all  exerting  their  influences  and  confusing  the  directness  of 
motion. 


414  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Lastly — 

5.  Locomotion  is  due  to  hunger  (chemical  affinity)  and  to 
other  physical  forces.  We  thus  have  all  the  life  activities  of  this 
low  animal  explained  as  the  result  of  force  and  matter.  Objec- 
tively regarded  we  have  satisfied  the  conditions,  but  fault  may  be 
found  with  having  brought  in  the  subjective  term  hunger.  This 
can  be  disposed  of  by  admitting  that  we  can  only  judge  of  hun- 
ger objectively  in  others,  whether  man,  dog,  or  amoeba,  by  what 
it  causes  them  to  do,  and  comparing  such  actions  with  our  own 
under  like  circumstances,  which  subjectively  we  realize  to  be  due 
to  hunger.  Perhaps  a  feeble  consciousness  is  a  product  of  these 
molecular  and  mass  motions — who  can  *say  ?  We  have  much  of 
the  aboriginal  disposition  to  concede  will  power  or  sensibility  to 
any  complex  mechanical  motions.  The  Zuni  Indians  worshiped 
the  great  Corliss  engine  at  the  Chicago  water-works,  and  wanted 
to  cast  themselves  into  its  wheels  as  into  the  arms  of  a  good 
spirit;  similarly  the  remark  is  often  made  by  the  intelligent  and 
educated :  "That  locomotive  acts  as  though  it  lived,"  or  "That 
machine  almost  talks."  If  we  knew  the  amoeba  to  be  composed 
of  crystalline  matter  we  would  merely  wonder  at  its  mechanical 
motions ;  because  it  is  flesh-like  we  assign  it  life,  though  we  know 
that  flesh  and  crystals  are  but  chemical  elements  differently  com- 
bined. 

President  Sorby,  of  the  Royal  Microscopical  Society,  esti- 
mates that  in  one  one-thousandth  of  an»  inch  sphere  of  albumen 
(protoplasm),  there  are  530,000,000,000  molecules.  With  proto- 
zoa one-tenth,  or  one  one-hundredth  of  an  inch  in  size,  there 
would  be  proportionately  more.  It  becomes  possible  to  conceive 
how  organisms  even  a  hundred-thousandth  of  an  inch  can  molecu- 
larly  exist.  So  the  difference  between  the  flea  and  the  elephant, 
mentally  as  well  as  physically,  need  not  be  other  than  a  merely 
quantitative  one,  for  qualitative  development  may  go  on  with  the 
lesser  number  of  molecules.  Thus  we  surmount  the  idea  that  mere 
size  of  brain  or  body  has  anything  to  do  with  relative  intellec- 
tuality considered  as  a  molecular  property. 

The  albuminoid,  protoplasmic,  one-celled  animal,  the  amoeba, 
may  be  roughly  represented  as  a  pile  of  chemical  atoms,  each 
dot  representing  a  molecule  of  such  atoms.     Attracted  toward  a 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  4I5 

piece  of  alga,  which  passes  into  the  amoeba  and  causes  it  to  grow. 
It  rejects  the  uneatable  part,  and  becoming  too  large,  splits — re- 
produces. 

Under  the  designation  chemism  we  have  disposed  of  moving, 
breathing,  eating;  from  which  as  a  consequence  proceeded 
growth,  reproduction  and  excretion.  We  called  the  chemical  at- 
traction involved  in  eating,  hunger,  a  desire,  a  feeling,  a  sensa- 
tion. Do  not  let  us  get  confused  at  this  or  any  other  stage,  by 
mixing  up  terms,  or  making  distinctions  where  none  exist ;  de- 
sires and  feelings  are  sensations  from  first  to  last,  and  we  shall 
so  see  them  to  be.  Then  sensation  is  nothing  but  molecular 
motion.  When  the  little  molecules  are  moving  about,  from  what- 
ever cause,  sensation  is  evoked.  It  is  not  sensation  that  moves 
them,  but  the  movements  produce  the  sensation ;  which  is  a  mere 
incident  of  the  motion  as  friction  heat  is  to  machinery  motion. 
All  its  motions  have  regard  to  satisfying  hunger,  and  its  mushy 
body  is  constructed  to  take  hold  of  things.  Prehension  or  taking 
hold  of  things  is  an  ability  merely  developed,  but  not  changed  in 
the  higher  animal  life,  for  arms,  hands  and  jaws  are  for  food 
prehension ;  the  legs  and  feet  take  hold  of  the  ground  in  the  food 
search;  ribs  assist  other  organs  in  oxygen  (food)  prehension. 
The  fundamental  life  processes  having  merely  more  elaborate 
organs  in  the  higher  than  in  the  lower  forms,  to  conserve  the 
same  necessary  ends.  While  in  this  protozoon  the  only  sensation 
it  has  refers  to  eating,  all  other  sensations  are  differentiated  from 
it,  and  if  you  reflect  a  little,  you  will  know  that  all  thought  is 
ultimately  traceable  to  that  homely  act.  Stop  eating  for  a  while 
and  be  convinced. 

You  get  from  this  your  first  philosophical  conception  of  pain 
and  pleasure.  An  unsatisfied  tension  of  the  amoebic  molecules  in 
the  one  and  the  act  of  gratification  in  the  other.  Indifference 
comes  with  plethora,  which  causes  quiescence  or  cessation  of 
maximum  motion — an  important  fact,  for  satiety  is  akin  to  death. 
The  filled  up  amoeba  does  not  move.  Activity  increases  in  all 
animal  life,  within  certain  limits,  with  hunger  or  desire.  Satis- 
faction palls,  cloys. 

Fancy  the  molecules  that  compose  protoplasm  to  be  grouped 
in  little  piles,  and  when  attracted  to  other  similar  molecules  a 


4l6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

commotion  would  occur.  If  this  motion  invariably  took  place 
under  similar  influences,  then  the  more  these  influences  occurred 
the  better  adjustment  would  there  be  to  a  repetition  of  them — 
adaptation  and  the  motion-sensation  would  become  instinctive, 
automatically  induced.  Now  if  food  attraction  caused  this  mo- 
tion once,  it  is  apparent  that  it  can  do  so  again.  The  repetition 
of  this  motion  would  be  one  phase  of  memory.  If  this  molecular 
disturbance  were  induced  by  some  other  cause  than  chemical 
attraction,  such  as  a  chance  movement  of  the  particles  in  the 
amoeba,  then  we  have  other  phases  of  memory,  anticipation,  recol- 
lection and  feelings,  such  as  dreams  are  made  of,  imperfect, 
mixed.     The  Chladni  figures  may  be  cited. 

These  Chaldni  forms  appear  when  a  glass  plate  upon  which 
sand  is  strewn  is  thrown  into  vibrations  by  musical  notes.  Each 
figure  is  definite  for  its  producing  note  and  will  be  reproduced  by 
that  note. 

Sensation  may  be  likened  to  the  vibration  of  a  pianO'  string 
produced  in  its  usual  way  through  the  key  and  hammer  stroke. 
Memory  is  the  reproduction  of  the  same  vibrations,  whether  in- 
duced in  the  usual  or  some  other  way. 

Summing  up  what  we  have  deduced  from  the  protoplasmic 
motions,  we  have,  life  processes,  such  as  eating,  growth,  excre- 
tion, reproduction  and  general  locomotory  movements  accounted 
for  as  interacting  physical  force  and  matter,  with  incident  and 
consequent  production  of  pain  and  pleasure,  sensation  and 
memory. 

Minds  unused  to  evolutionary  conceptions  will  ask  what  all 
this  has  to  do  with  man  and  his  mentality.  Refer  tO'  modern 
text  books  on  physiology,  embryology  and  histology  (micro- 
scopic anatomy),  botanical  and  zoological  works,  and  you  will 
discover  statements  clearly  made  or  implied  throughout,  to  the 
effect  that  man  is  but  a  colony  of  amoeba-like  cells,  grouped  and 
differentiated  to  effect  better  the  same  functions  inherent  in  the 
original  amoeba  cell.  While  all  the  processes  are  carried  on  by 
one  dot  of  protoplasm  in  the  case  of  the  one-celled  animal,  the 
many-celled  animal,  such  as  man,  has  certain  groups  of  cells 
highly  developed  in  one  direction,  others  in  another;  with  the 
necessary  diminution  of  other  abilities  in  the  specially  developed 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  417 

instances,  just  as  the  good  blacksmith  may  not  be  a  good  clerk, 
but  specialism  has  developed  both  as  advantageous  to  society. 
The  clerk  and  blacksmith  are  not  the  less  men  because  special- 
ized, the  brain  and  muscle  cells  are  none  the  less  cells.  The  asso- 
ciation of  these  functions  with  their  sensations,  through  an  inter- 
nuncial  nervous  system,  may  be  likened  to  the  metropolitan  and 
continental  linking  of  interests  by  telegraphs.  In  effect  this  will 
appear  as  we  proceed,  to  be  more  than  an  analogy ;  it  is  homology 
or  identity. 

The  monistic  philosophy  shows  that  society  acts  as  the  man 
acts,  and  his  nature  is  that  of  his  cells ;  these  in  turn  are  governed 
by  molecular  attributes,  but  that  man  can  react  upon  his  compo- 
sition and  give  direction  to  his  acts  by  conforming  better  to 
nature's  laws,  through  knowing  those  laws;  and  achieve  thereby 
the  maximum  allotment  of  happiness  for  himself  and  others. 

The  brain  and  nervous  system  are  generally  regarded  as  the 
centers  of  mind  and  sensation.  The  view  is  correct  enough  in 
one  way  and  wholly  erroneous  in  another,  for  there  are  more  ani- 
mals without  than  with  brains,  or  even  nervous  systems,  to  whom 
mind  and  sensation  cannot  properly  be  denied. 

The  protoplasmic  amoeba,  that  reduces  the  problems  of 
physiology  to  their  simplest  forms,  is  irritable.  Mechanical  irri- 
tation, such  as  the  prick  of  a  pin,  will  stimulate  it  to  accelerated 
motion.  Any  living  matter  that  thus  explodes  energy  when 
stimulated  is  said  to  be  "irritable."  Irritability  is  the  function 
most  highly  developed  in  the  nerves,  especially  the  nerve  centers, 
and  it  is  through  the  motions  induced  we  have  the  only  objective 
evidence  of  sensation.  If  you  prick  a  man  and  he  writhes,  you 
surmise  he  has  felt  it;  if  he  does  not  move  you  do  not  know 
whether  he  felt  the  prick  or  not.  Contractions  are  very  com- 
mon manifestations  of  irritability,  but  so  interchangeable  are 
"vital"  and  physical  forces,  sometimes  the  stimulus  produces  heat 
instead  of  "vital"  movements. 

In  the  protoplasm,  from  which  all  the  tissues  proceed,  reside 
the  abilities  of  all  those  tissues.  For  example,  the  nervous  sys- 
tem is  eminently  irritable,  the  muscles  are  eminently  contractile; 
other  organs  have  developed  special  abilities,  such  as  locomotory, 
prehensile,  gustatory,  reproductory,  respiratory.     What  was  pos- 


4l8  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND, 

sessed  undifferentiated  by  the  simple  protoplasmic  cell  has  be- 
come separately  the  functions  of  particular  groups  of  cells.  How 
this  came  about  is  the  problem  of  comparative  physiology  which 
the  theory  of  evolution  is  solving.  The  body  and  mind  are  too 
indissolubly  connected  to  admit  of  any  psychology  being  other 
than  absurd  if  all  physiological  functions  are  not  discussed;  but 
the  necessity  for  condensing  compels  us  to  skim  over  some  of 
the  most  interesting  processes  of  development  with  mere  refer- 
ences. 

The  one-celled  developed  into  the  many-celled  animal,  the 
morula  or  mulberry  form,  because  the  cells,  instead  of  escaping, 
were  bound  together  by  an  outer  membrane.  The  morula  ate  and 
grew,  as  did  the  amoeba,  only  when  it  burst  by  repletion  it  liber- 
ated one-celled  animals  that  afterward  became  many-celled,  sim- 
ply because  the  materials  that  composed  the  young  were  split 
off,  inherited,  from  the  parent,  and  for  purely  mechanical  rea- 
sons the  life  history  of  parent  and  offspring  would  be  the  same. 

The  gastrula  stage  comes  next  when  the  many-celled  animal, 
the  mulberry  form,  collapsed  and  formed  a  bag  with  a  layer  of 
cells  inside  and  another  outside.  This  stage  is  represented  Dy  a 
vast  number  of  animals,  such  as  the  sea-anemones  and  worms. 

Elongate  the  gastrula  animal,  and  you  have  the  worm  shape. 
Gradual  improvements  occurred  in  some  of  these  forms,  as  favor- 
able circumstances  were  encountered,  and  step  by  step  the  rudi- 
mentary intestine  develops  a  stomach  and  other  subsidiary  or- 
gans, as  the  habits  of  the  descendants  change  and  adaptation  is 
necessary.  Blood  vessels  appear,  and  their  evolution  can  be 
easily  traced  to  the  twisting  of  an  artery  upon  itself  to  form  a 
heart,  and  further.  Likewise  the  course  of  limb  growth  through 
blunt  projections,  fins,  up  to  wing  or  arm  and  feet  successively; 
the  change  of  swimming  bladder  into  lungs  and  the  advancement 
of  protoplasm  into  cartilage  and  some  of  the  latter  into  unstriped 
muscle  cells,  thence  into  striped  muscles.  All  this  came  about 
through  accident.  The  collapsed  morula  found  it  had  a  bag  in 
which  albuminous  substances  could  be  held  and  digested  better. 
The  cells  that  lined  this  bag  as  naturally  and  readily  developed 
into  special  eating  cells  as  politicians  become  thieves — through 
opportunity,  ability  and  desire.     Special  reproductory  cells  devel- 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  4I9 

Oped  from  the  internal  sac.  Every  organ  may  be  traced  in  its 
growth  from  the  egg  (a  single  protoplasmic  cell),  and  in  its 
successive  modifications  in  series  of  animals  succeeding  one  an- 
other from  the  amoeba  to  the  man. 

That  the  feeling  of  love  was  derived  from  hunger,  and  is 
identical  with  it  in  protozoa,  has  been  previously  explained.  The 
folly  of  the  metaphysical  systems  is  evident  in  ignoring  the  bear- 
ings of  this  most  powerful  sentiment,  and  its  derivation,  upon  all 
life  relations. 

The  relativity  of  the  terms  excretion  and  secretion  is  notice- 
able when  we  study  how  the  cell  groups  live  that  make  up  the 
body.  One  set  of  cells  may  be  situated  to  receive  the  unelabo- 
rated  food,  part  of  which  it  absorbs  and  part  passes  through  its 
cellular  contents  changed  to  other  conditions.  This  changed 
food  becomes,  perforce,  that  upon  which  the  next  set  of  cells 
thrive  best,  and  we  may  follow  these  changes  from  meat  and 
vegetables  ingested  to  the  secretion  of  milk  and.  tears. 

Thus  we  are  compelled  to  shamefully  slur  over  the  grand 
stories  biology  has  to  tell  in  the  endeavor  to  reach  the  nervous 
system  quickly.  But  perpetual  reference  to  the  other  organs 
must  be  made  to  appreciate,  anything  like  adequately,  what  the 
brain  does. 

We  have  seen  that  certain  cells  develop  extraordinarily  what 
primarily  was  the  single-cell  ability.  From  the  amoeba  perform- 
ing with  its  one  little  protoplasmic  dot  all  the  life  activities  we 
have  in  the  higher  metazoa  intestinal  cells  that  elaborate  food  and 
hold  other  activities  in  abeyance,  muscle  cells  that  contract  to 
stimuli,  ovarian  cells  that  centralize  reproduction,  lung  cells  that 
are  mainly  respiratory.^ 

To  a  greater  or  less  extent  the  original  abilities  are  preserved 
in  every  cell,  nO'  matter  what  function  it  serves.  All  cells  must 
eat,  secrete,  reproduce — some  rapidly,  others  slowly.  The  work 
devolving  upon  them  determines  how  much  of  and  what  particu- 
lar character  shall  predominate,  as  with  men. 

■'  Observe  that  the  lung  is  appended  to  the  upper  part  of  the  alimentary 
canal  as  evidence  of  the  association  of  eating  and  respiration,  and  that  the 
oviducts  and  cloaca  are  connected  in  birds  and  embryos  of  higher  animals, 
indicating  the  ingestive  and  excretory  nature  of  multiplication. 


420  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

When  the  many-celled  animal  without  a  nervous  system  re- 
ceives an  impression  and  responds  to  it  by  moving,  the  impulse 
is  propagated  from  one  cell  to  the  next  and  but  sluggish  motions 
are  induced.  Manifestly  it  would  be  an  advantage  to  have  a 
telegraph  system  to  cause  instantaneous  and  united  action. 

Little  amoeba-like  animals*  happening  to  live  where  sand 
abounded  picked  up  an  overcoat  of  that  material  by  agglutina- 
tion. The  mollusc  falling  in  with  chalky  and  other  lime  particles, 
which  it  separated  from  its  food  by  excretion,  developed  its  shell 
because  the  secretion  happened  to  adhere  externally.  The  her- 
mit crab  finds  a  covering  already  made,  and  occupies  it  by  squat^ 
ter  right.  It  does  not  matter  to  any  one  of  these  how  the  advan- 
tage befell ;  it  is  taken  as  such  and  adjusted  to.  The  fighting  cock 
will  use  the  steel  gaflfs  as  though  they  had  grown  from  his  legs,, 
nor  is  the  cell  a  particle  more  particular.  If  it  find  in  its  environ- 
ment material  that  has  enough  affinity  for  it  to  remain  in  its 
vicinity,  and  a  life  process  is  subserved  by  that  fact,  things  chem- 
ical and  mechanical  in  nature  perpetuate  the  association  by  nat- 
ural selection. 

As  the  rhizopod  could  not  have  acquired  his  covering  where 
there  was  no  sand,  the  ancestral  worm  could  not  have  picked  up 
a  nervous  system  in  the  absence  of  assimilable  phosphates.  These 
nerve  compounds  had  a  molecular  mode  of  action  altogether  dif- 
ferent from  anything  experienced  before  by  the  animals.  With 
evolution  of  higher  types  the  explosive  substance  was  excreted 
irregularly  and  later  more  definitely,  as  Cope  has  shown^  was 
the  case  with  the  skeletons  of  early  reptilia.  Next  an  encapsulat- 
ing membrane  formed  about  these  lines  of  phosphatic  granules  in 
obedience  to  the  ordinary  pathological  process  that  an  intermedi- 
ary tissue  forms  about  any  foreign  substance  as  a  resultant  of  the 
mode  of  operation  of  the  two  tissues.  In  due  time  an  area  of 
nerve  granules  finds  itself  being  suppressed  at  one  point  and  ar- 
ranged at  another  until  the  fully  developed  nervous  system 
appears. 

The  possibility  of  so  important  a  structure  as  the  nervous 
having  been  acquired  by  accident,  seems  preposterous,  but  let  us 

*The  rhizopod  (astrodiscus  arenaceus). 

^  Fossil  Batrachia,  American    Naturalist,  1883. 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  43 1 

reason  from  other  matters  to  it.  You  realize  that  accident  kills 
many.  If  you  sttidy  the  matter  closer  you  will  be  convinced  it 
kills  more.  Accidents  determine  such  things  as  marriages  and 
births  as  well  as  deaths.  Fortune  and  misfortune  are  accidental, 
more  than  anything  else. 

At  first  doubtless  this  was  a  disease,  an  excrescence  that  was 
By  chance  and  accident  is  here  meant  what  is  generally  accepted 
to  be  their  meanings.  Strictly  speaking  when  everything  is  the 
outcome  of  some  preceding  cause,  there  can  be  no  such  phenom- 
enon as  an  accident^  but  in  the  sense  of  opposed  to  design  it  is  a 
convenient  term. 

Bony  excretions  at  first  indefinitely  arranged  served  but  a 
feeble  purpose,  but  afterward  definitely  arranged  in  lines  relating 
the  muscles  contraction  became  more  direct  and  useful. 

At  first  all  tissues  indifferently  exuded  the  bone  and  nerve 
granules,  but  eventually  certain  cells  became  the  ones  best  suited 
to  elaborate  these  materials  and  we  have  the  osteal  and  the  nerve 
cells  as  a  result  of  this  high  grade  evolution. 

When  nerve  granules  began  to  be  linearly  arranged''  even 
then  these  rudimentary  nerves  served  but  haphazard  uses.  Each 
pellet  was  an  excreted  compound  of  phosphorus  with  organic 
liydro-carbonaceous  materials  which,  however  faintly  it  exploded, 
when  disturbed,  became  a  new  experience  in  the  environment  to 
be  reckoned  with.  Heat  and  light  increased  its  molecular  "kick." 
Electricity,  though  less  often  met  with,  affected  the  substance 
annoying  to  the  animal,  but  a  readjustment  occurred  on  the  basis 
of  reconciliation  and  a  new  mode  of  life-working.  The  cells  then 
were  shocked  by  the  new  tissue,  but  such  forms  as  could  not  rid 
themselves  of  it  encapsulated  it,  covered  it,  just  as  a  bullet  in  the 
body  would  be  covered,  in  time,  by  a  sac.  The  intercellular  dis- 
tribution of  these  nerve  granules  would  now  exert  no  effect  upon 
the  cells,  but  whenever,  by  occasional  exposure  of  the  granules 
to  an  influence  that  would  cause  the  explosion,  it  was  discovered 
that  instead  of  having  to  wait  for  motions  to  be  transferred  from 
cell  to  cell  before  the  entire  organism  could  be  affected  by  motory 
causes  this  new  tissue  conveyed  the  needed  stimulation  promptly 

°  Kleinenberg's  Hydra  and  Hubrecht's  low  worm. 


422  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  a  distant  cell  in  a  very  simple  way.  The  law  of  least  resist- 
ances determined  the  next  step.  The  granules  would,  from  being- 
diffused,'  be  arranged,  by  the  motions  of  the  low  animal,  in  some 
kinds  of  lines,  even  though  badly  defined  ones.  The  quick  con- 
veyance of  impressions  made  the  cell  colony  more  energetic,  and 
wherever  this  energy  happened  to  conserve  life  the  species  with 
the  m,ost  definite  nerve  strands  survived. 

Hunger  would  develop  colonial  motion  in  the  direction  of 
hunger  appeasing  movements.  The, part  which  is  most  affected, 
the  intestinal  tract,  becomes  for  the  time  being  the  center  of 
stimuli  production. 

The  law  of  association  steps  in  to  determine  what  cells  shall 
be  united.  The  general  cell  need  of  oxygen  establishes  a  muscu- 
lar and  nervous  means  for  circulation,  and  other  hunger  appeas- 
ing processes  make  routes  and  means  elsewhere. 

What  is  known  as  the  neuroglia  or  gray  matter  of  the  nerv- 
ous system  I  regard  as  the  product  of  cells  that  have  developed 
molecular  irritability  above  all  other  functions ;  the  fact  that  this 
gray  matter  is  without  cell  membranes  counts  for  nothing — de- 
velopment necessitated  this  peculiarity. 

A  highly  sensitive  neuroglia  substance  would  transmit  its  irri- 
tations rapidly  to  a  contiguous  highly  contractile  muscle,  then 
when  the  sensitive  neuroglia  was  concealed  and  nerve  granules 
conveyed  the  impressions  inward  the  next  arrangement  appears, 
the  "sensory  nerves." 

Better  definition  gives  the  lines  of  nerves  instead  of  the 
plexus. 

Then  follows  an  illy  arranged  set  of  nerves  between  the  mus- 
cles and  the  gray  matter,  afterward  becoming  better  arranged 
as  the  ''motor  nerves."  This  is  really  what  occurs  in  the  embryo- 
logical  development  of  every  animal  that  has  a  nervous  system  at 
all,  as  well  as  in  the  "phylogeny,"  or  evolutionary  progress. 

We  are  now  prepared  to  consider  reflex  nervous  action.  Join 
a  lot  of  these  segments  and  we  have  the  spinal  cord  and  nerves 
of  the  connecting  link  between  vertebrates  and  invertebrates.'^ 

Up  to  this  stage  indifferent  tissues  have  secreted  the  nerve 

^  Amphioxus  lanceolatus. 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  423 

granules;  thereafter  the  basis  substance  of  sensation,  the  neu- 
rogha,  A,  develops  these  nerve  elements,  and  under  the  micro- 
scope the  homogeneity  of  the  neuroglia  disappears,  and  ascend- 
ing through  intelligence  becomes  more  and  more  filled  with  fibrils 
of  fine  granules  of  a  nervous  character.^ 

Yet  development  goes  on  and  the  neuroglia  generates  nerve 
cells,  whose  office  it  is  to  more  rapidly  and  readily  form  these 
granules  for  the  axis  cylinders  of  the  nerves. 

The  number  of  impulses  or  irritations  required  to  produce  a 
continued  contraction  in  the  feebler  developed  muscles  is  thirty 
per  second;  in  the  voluntary  muscles,  such  as  are  concerned  in 
moving  the  body  or  limbs,  nineteen  and  one-half  per  second.® 
Fewer  impulses  passing  over  a  nerve  result  in  tremors  or  trem- 
bling. A  lowered  vitality,  such  as  drunkards  exhibit,  or  when 
there  is  emotional  diversion,  interferes  with  the  proper  succession 
of  impulses,  and  the  muscles  are  tremulous. 

The  inseparableness  of  psychic  and  physical  life  is  evident 
from  lowest  to  highest,  but  may  be  well  illustrated  by  the  head- 
less lancelet  and  the  lamprey  eel  with  a  feeble  but  better  devel- 
oped nervous  system.  The  next  step  essentially  represents  the 
spinal  cord  of  the  lancelet,  with  ingoing  sensory  and  outgoing 
motor  nerves.  If  an  irritation  passes  over  one  of  the  first-men- 
tioned nerves  and  reaches  the  gray  irritable  matter  of  the  cord 
the  irritability  is  communicated  up  and  down  the  gray  and  irra- 
diated to  the  general  muscular  system  through  the  motor  nerves. 
Diffusion.  Now,  if  a  certain  sensory  nerve  bundle  became  sub- 
jected more  than  others  to  a  peculiar  impression  the  nearest 
motor  nerves  would  not  only  respond  most  energetically,  but  the 
gray  molecules  would  perforce  arrange  themselves  better  to  ac- 
commodate the  passage  of  the  impulse.  Here  we  have  our  sen- 
sation and  memory  again,  only  in  this  case  with  special  tissues 
for  their  seat — the  neuroglia.  But  the  motions  are  just  as  liable 
not  to  serve  as  to  serve  a  useful  purpose,  and  that  is  the  fact  we 
can  observe"  when  a  worm  or  even  some  low  vertebrate  is  inter- 
fered with;  their  motions  do  not  seem  to  be  properly  adjusted  to 

'  Exner. 
^Helmholz. 


424  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

a  reasonable  end,  as  when  the  eel  in  escaping  wriggles  toward 
instead  of  away  from  you.  Plainly  such  low  forms  as  by  acci- 
dent procured  a  better  adjustment  and  moved  in  response  to 
stimuli  in  a  way  to  secure  prey  and  escape  enemies  would  not 
only  survive  but  multiply  by  descent  the  higher  forms  so  insti- 
tuted, and  these  improved  nervous  systems  would  lift  their  suc- 
cessors gradually  through  the  vertebrate  series  to  the  highest 
life. 

If  there  be  a  choice  of  two  routes  for  the  passage  of  the  im- 
pulse in  the  gray  matter  the  wavering  between  these  two  routes 
constitutes  hesitation,  which  we  shall  see  a  little  later  on  is  the 
basis  of  doubt,  thought,  reason!  When  by  any  superiority  of 
advantage  over  the  other  a  route  is  selected  the  irritation  disturbs 
a  more  direct  tract  of  molecules  in  the  cord  gray,  so  as  to  invari- 
ably respond  to  the  given  stimulus,  and  a  certain  set  of  muscles 
are  moved,  then  automatism  is  established,  and  we  have  instinct, 
which  is  the  end,  the  aim,  the  death  of  reason. 

The  single-celled  organism  is  a  wandering  nomad,  but  when 
several  cells  cohere,  for  a  common  life  purpose,  the  condition  is 
that  of  a  savage  mob,  until  special  abilities  develop  in  the  sepa- 
rate cells;  then  the  tribal  condition  arises.  If  these  cells  are  not 
properly  related  to  one  another,  and  food  is  unequally  distributed, 
causing  many  to  perish  while  the  few  are  surfeited,  the  animal 
represents  an  absolute  monarchy.  When  an  advance  is  made 
and  the  needs  of  the  multitude  are  better  supplied,  the  condition 
resembles  that  of  a  limited  monarchy.  I  maintain  (notwithstand- 
ing Haeckel's  different  view),  that  the, republic  is  typified  by  a 
healthy  homo  sapiens — worthy  of  that  specific  title,  composed  of 
cells,  altruistically,  though  mechanically,  grouped  into  organs,  no 
one  of  which  cells  or  organs  demands  or  receives  more  than  suf- 
ficient to  serve  the  good  of  all.  A  diseased  state  would  result 
otherwise,  and  if  the  surplus  be  among  intestinal  organs  then  the 
government  is  for  politicians  and  privileged  classes. 

The  ideal  man  may  no  more  exist  than  does  the  ideal  repub- 
lic ;  but  theoretically  the  brain  rules  the  body  in  the  interests  and 
by  the  consent  of  all  the  bodily  units.  If  a  specially  favored  con- 
trolling power  arises  in  such  a  government  and  the  muscles  or 
the  alimentary  tract  gain  control  we  have  the  military  or  the  mer- 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  425 

cantile,  the  pugnacious  or  gluttonous  dominance.  The  evolution 
of  nations,  societies,  species  or  individuals  proceeds  over  identical 
paths :  The  lowest  animal  is  a  defenseless  absorber  of  food ;  a 
few  steps  higher  in  the  zoological  series  there  is  ferocity ;  higher 
still,  cunning.  The  human  infant  passes  through  the  stages  of 
milk  imbibing,  savagery,  barbarism,  to  more  thoughtful  man- 
hood. Nations  reach  civilization  by  developing  industrialism 
which  binds  together  workers  intelligently  and  considerately. 
When  militancy  prevails  development  is  arrested,  the  country  is 
a  lubberly  schoolboy  with  a  chip  on  his  shoulder.  The  wise  adult 
has  outgrown  his  childish  greed  and  bellicosity,  no  longer  lies, 
steals  or  wastes  time  in  buffoonery.  He  thinks.  But,  to  think 
he  must  have  the  apparatus  for  thinking.  Printing,  telegraphy 
and  rapid  transit  bring  the  individuals  of  a  people  into  sensible 
cooperation  and  the  silly  sword,  gun  and  clownish  uniform  finds 
less  favor.  The  physical  basis  of  intelligence  is  proclaimed  by 
two  facts : 

I.  The  nervous  system  relates  the  body  cells  together  in  the 
interests  of  all  the  cells  of  the  body. 

2.     The  brain  relates  the  nervous  system  more  complexly  to 
the  same  end. 

A  direct  ethical  inference  is,  then,  that  charity,  forgiveness, 
considerateness,  justice,  etc.,  are  expediency  outgrowths  and  that 
humanity  is  but  a  form  of  wisdom.  I  would  like  to  take  my 
readers  over  the  studies  I  have  found  so  fascinating :  Embry- 
ology, neurology  and  other  branches  of  biology;  but  must  resist 
the  temptation  to  ramble  over  this  naturalists'  paradise  and  keep 
within  the  hedgerows  of  our  text.  We  have  not  the  time  to  fol- 
low out  the  development  of  the  nerves  that  ascend  the  spinal  cord 
to  the  head,  the  passage  of  touch  nerves  into  those  for  special 
sense  with  end  organs  such  as  the  eye,  ear  and  nose ;  the  accumu- 
lation of  '^commissures"  or  connecting  strands  of  nerves  in  the 
brain.  You  will  find  those  matters  fairly  treated  by  Wundt, 
Spencer,  Bain  and  the  modern  physiologists  generally. 

Elongated,  headless  animals,  through  locomotion  becoming 
easiest  with  one  end  first,  gave  rise  to  animals  with  heads,  as 
the  eel,  because  the  head  end  encountering  soonest  the  changes 
in  the  environment,  differentiation  would  be  most  likely  to  pro- 


426  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ceed  at  the  head.  The  special  senses  grouped  themselves  here  in- 
stead of  being  scattered  as  they  are  in  lower  forms  of  life.  Mo- 
tions becoming  oftenest  regulated  from  the  head  a  longitudinal 
series  of  nerves  sprang  up  which  afterwards  became  the  lat- 
eral nerve  columns  of  the  cord,  these  relate  the  other  seg- 
ments of  the  body  with  the  special  sense  organs  and  by  enabling 
the  body  to  be  controlled  mainly  through  higher  differentiated 
senses  a  decided  advance  is  made  in  the  organism  evolution. 

The  highest  animals  have  the  most  complex  nervous  systems ; 
doubt,  hesitation,  thought  or  reason,  essentially  the  same  process, 
exercise  nerve  centers  that  are  more  nearly  the  protoplasmic  state, 
such  as  the  neuroglia ;  greater  heat  is  evolved,  more  blood  is  con- 
sumed and  the  effort  is  attended  by  consciousness.^*^  The  spinal 
cord  gray  matter  undergoes  this  vibratory  transfer  and  so  ani- 
mals without  heads  may  think,  but  when  the  tracts  are  built  up  so 
as  to  make  the  motions  instinctive,  such  as  tossing  off  a  fly  from 
the  hand,  consciousness  need  not  be  involved ;  the  automatic  appa- 
ratus works  reflexly,  with  less  friction,  less  heat,  less  blood  con- 
sumption, and  with  but  feeble  sensation  evolution. 

In  learning  to  play  upoon  the  piano  the  higher  senses,  with 
touch,  are  brought  into  use;  the  routes  through  the  brain  and 
cord  to  correlate  the  finger  movements  are  being  established  with 
difficulty.  When  the  piece  is  learned  it  may  be  played  in  the  dark 
with  but  the  finger  touch  sense  to  guide.  A  revolution  has  been 
effected  in  the  arrangement  of  the  nerve  strands  in  the  brain 
and  adjustment  of  muscles  in  the  arm  and  fingers  has  also  oc- 
curred. Reason  was  involved  at  the  outset.  Instinct  was  the  out- 
come, and  where  certain  invariable  causes  produce  in  any  animal 
invarible  effects,  brain  shapes  may  be  thus  built  up  and  transmit- 
ted to  progeny ;  inherited ;  and  as  soon  as  the  structural  form  of 
brain  is  developed  the  animal  will  do  what  its  mechanism  has  been 
constructed  to  do,  the  chicken  will  peck  as  soon  as  it  escapes  from 
its  shell.  Dispositions  and  traits  are  thus  transmitted  with  the 
"intuitions,"  superstitions,  dexterities  and  stupidities. 

We  do  and  think  what  our  molecular  make-up  permits  us  to  do 

^°  Prof.  Herzen,  Journal  of  Mental  Science,  London,  April,  1884 :  "The 
intensity  of  consciousness  is  in  direct  ratio  to  the  intensity  of  functional 
disintegration." 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  427 

and  think,  and  that  make-up  is  the  product  of  our  environment. 

Assume  that  the  nerves  all  over  the  body  are  in  a  state  of 
chemical  agitation  represented  by  100,000,000  vibrations  per 
second,  10"  becomes  the  normal  for  nerve  activity,  departures 
from  which  constitute  sensation.  Lowering  of  this  normal  pro- 
duces numbness,  irregularity,  pain.  If  from  50  to  1,400  interrup- 
tions occur  the  feeling  of  touch  is  experienced ;  45  to  40,  000  con- 
stitute hearing ;  jnuch  more  rapid  interferences  induce  sight  sen- 
sations. Mo3t  of  these  impressions  produce  quivers  diffused 
through  the  gray  neuroglia  of  the  cord  and  brain,  but  when  re- 
currences arrange  the  minute  molecules  of  that  sensitive  gray 
substance  into  little  lines,  paths,  tracts,  fibrils,  fasciculi,  plexuses, 
memory  is  evoked ;  the  impression  is  recorded,  and  each  such  im- 
pression produces  in  the  brain  a  corresponding  alteration  constant 
for  the  same  cause. 

In  the  back  part  of  the  brain,  where  sight  impressions  are  re- 
corded, a  peculiar  eight-layered  arrangement  of  cells  and  fibrils 
is  found;  where  hearing  memories  are  stored  up,  at  the  side  of 
the  brain,  other  distributions  occur.  I  am,  for  brevity  sake,  re- 
duced to  the  necessity  of  using  coarse  similes  where  precise  de- 
tails can  be  given,  and  experience  all  the  disgust  of  the  engineer 
who  is  obliged  to  forego  technicalities  and  explain  that  his  com- 
plicated machine  acts  by  the  piston  pushing  certain  rods  and 
wheels,  when  dozens  of  delicate  principles  must  be  unmentioned. 

These  stored-up  recorded  impressions  are  more  complexly 
united  through  nerve  tracts  that  grow  more  and  more  intricate  as 
intelligence  increases. 

Roughly,  then,  suppose  all  the  gas  and  water  pipes,  sewers, 
mains,  conduits  or  other  things  in  a  city,  that  permit  water  to 
flow  through  them,  were  connected.  A  constant  pressure  of 
water  constantly  trickling  through  the  smaller  tubes  and  rushing 
along  the  larger  would  represent  the  normal  nerve  flow.  Inter- 
ruptions in  different  degrees  and  for  different  lengths  of  time 
may  be  likened  to  what  occurs  when  a  touch,  sound,  sight,  taste 
or  smell  is  experienced.  If  there  occur  impediments  en  route, 
and  at  first  it  is  uncertain  which  route  the  water  will  take,  there  is 
hesitation,  which  is  reason,  doubt,  thought.  The  facile  passage 
of  the  current  is  instinct,  the  route  overcome. 


428  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Dropping  the  comparison,  a  thought  works  in  the  brain  slowly 
or  swiftly  by  a  succession  of  molecular  oscillations,  and  taking  a 
brain  region  as  a  cube  with  one  side  divided  into  areas  figured 
from  I  to  icx),  another  side  lettered  from  A  to  Z,  the  remaining 
side  similarly  lettered  a  to  z,  then  one  thought  would  be  ex- 
pressed by  the  flashing  of  atoms  along  the  irregular  route  7,  L,  n, 
75,  and  another  R.  19,  K.  x.,  and  so  on.  Microscopical  anato- 
mists have  mapped  out  hundreds  of  thousands  of  these  routes. 
The  orderly  mechanism  of  the  brain  is  being  revealed,  its  laws  are 
being  unfolded  patiently,  toilsomely,  quietly,  by  skillful,  learned 
students,  most  of  whom  are  steeped  in  bitter  poverty ;  who  seek 
no  notoriety,  receive  no  assistance,  whose  writings  are  read  by  the 
appreciative  few;  their  contributions  swell  the  sum  of  human 
knowledge,  and  with  knowing  that  the  world  is  better  off  for 
their  having  lived  they  must  be  satisfied,  as  sole  recompense. 

As  the  pseudo-sciences  alchemy  and  astrology  gave  rise  to 
chemistry  and  astronomy,  so  phrenology  has  been  succeeded  by 
craniology  and  cerebrology.  Races  are  now  known  to  have  head 
shapes  peculiar  to  themselves ;  but  only  in  a  general  way  does  the 
skull  conformation  indicate  mentality.  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes 
says :  *'You  can  tell  by  bumps  what  is  in  a  man's  head  as  readily 
as  what  is  in  a  safe  by  feeling  its  door  knob." 

Most  of  the  phrenological  deductions  are  illogical  and  many 
are  controverted  by  facts.  For  instance,  "vitativeness,"  or  the 
desire  to  live,  is  located  by  phrenology  over  the  mastoid  process, 
behind  the  ear ;  a  huge  bump  of  bone  into  which  a  lancet  is  often 
deeply  thrust  by  surgeons  without  fear  of  touching  the  brain. 
The  "perceptives" — form,  size,  color,  weight  appreciation,  are 
placed  along  the  eyebrow  ridge,  though  the  brain  is  very  remote 
from  that  part,  and  primitive  races,  or  even  apes,  have  the  largest 
development  of  that  arch. 

Gall  observed  that  the  best  scholars  had  protuberant  eyes,  so 
he  located  "language"  behind  the  optic,  an  absurd  proceeding,  for 
the  widely  opened  eye  is  an  expression  of  wonder,  the  exercise  of 
which  faculty  has  led  to  erudition  in  general.  In  Gall's  time  lin- 
guistics were  the  height  of  knowledge,  hence  his  conclusions. 
Constructiveness  and  combativeness  belong  to  a  high  grade  of  in- 
tellect, and  while  we  can  deny  that  they  have  the  exact  locations 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  429 

assigned  by  phrenologists  it  is  not  remarkable  that  the  increased 
brain  size  that  accompanies  brain  exercise  should  widen  the  head 
in  the  region  assigned  to  these  bumps.  Reasoning  power  and 
pertinacity  could  more  properly  be  thus  placed,  but  as  the  frontal 
brain  develops'  and  broadens  the  forehead  the  skull  does  not  al- 
ways keep  pace  with  this  growth,  so  that  one  with  a  narrow  or 
even  low  forehead  may  have  a  large  brain  compressed  into  nar- 
rower compass.  Per  contra,  the  disease  called  hydrocephalus 
may  give  the  idiot  the  "front  of  Jove."  There  is  a  tendency  ot 
the  cranium  to  adapt  itself  to  brain  growth,  but  the  rigid  bones 
require  centuries  to  establish  radical  changes;  the  softer  tissues- 
beneath  folding  up  in  lines  of  least  resistance.  It  can  be  readily 
seen  from  this  how  head  shape  could  be  a  race  characteristic,  but 
give  no  clue  to  individual  traits,  save  in  the  crudest  ways. 

Says  Prof.  Gunning  '}^     "In  the  Museum  of  the  Smithsonian  ^ 
Institution  may  be  seen  a  cranium  of  enormous  size  and  most 
perfect  symmetry.     Such  a  noble  forehead !  and  balanced  against 
this  such  a  perfect  backhead !     All  the  lines  and  curves  so  strong, 
so  graceful ! 

"The  owner  of  the  head  was  a  miserable  Indian  who  never 
got  from  it  so  much  as  a  beaver  trap !" 

The  new  phrenology  is  deduced  from  the  study  of  the  brain 
itself  and  brings  into  that  study  mathematics,  physics,  chemistry 
"and  other  sciences  where  the  old  phrenology  was  isolated  in  this 
respect,  often  defiant  of  exact  knowledge.  O.  S.  Fowler  used  to 
say  to  his  audiences  "Newton's  Principia  is  all  bosh.  It  is  not 
gravitation  that  holds  the  planets  in  space;  I  have  discovered 
that  it  is  electricity."  The  new  phrenology  is  cultivated  by 
learned,  modest  men,  who  never  give  character  charts. 

The  incidental  mention  of  relative  and  absolute  brain  weights 
and  sizes  of  the  sexes,  by  an  author  in  the  Popular  Science 
Monthly  (April,  1887),  brought  out  a  rather  peppery  reply  and  a 
rejoinder  in  succeeding  numbers.  Correlative  articles  made  a 
timely  appearance  in  the  July  issue. 

Time-honored  post-mortem  statistics  were  cited  and  sneered 
at,  but  the  very  evident  fact  was  maintained  that  the  average 
female  brain  weight  was  less  than  that  of  the  male. 

"  Life  History  of  Our  Planet,  p.  289. 


430  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

m 

The  main  points  brought  out  are  as  follows : 

The  brain  of  the  child  is  larger  in  proportion  to  its  body  than 
is  that  of  the  adult,  but  immaturity  should  prevent  too  many  stu- 
dies being  undertaken  in  youth. 

The  men  and  women  who  have  made  the  most  of  themselves 
are  those  who  have  began  to  study  hard  after  they  have  reached 
adult  life. 

The  skull  of  the  human  male  is  of  greater  capacity  than  that 
of  the  female,  and  civilization  increases  the  difference.  The 
average  male  brain  weighs  a  little  over  forty-nine  ounces,  the 
female  a  little  over  forty-four  ounces,  or  about  five  ounces  less. 
The  proportion  being  lOO  190. 

Relatively  to  the  weight  of  the  body  the.  difference  is  in  favor 
of  women.  The  body  of  the  female  is  shorter  and  weighs  less 
than  that  of  the  male.  Thus  in  man  the  weight  of  the  brain  to 
that  of  the  body  average  as  i  :36.50,  while  in  women  it  is  as 
1 :36.46,  a  difference  of  .04  in  her  favor. 

A  large  brain  may  have  its  gray  cortical  substance  thinner 
than  a  smaller  brain. 

In  man  the  frontal  lobe,  separated  from  the  posterior  portion 
by  the  ''fissure  of  Rolando,"  affords  43.9  per  cent,  of  the  total 
brain  length  in  the  male,  31.3  per  cent,  in  the  female. 

The  specific  gravity  is  greater  in  male  than  female  brains,  but 
this  increases  in  insanity  and  old  age  in  both  sexes.  Dr.  Ham- 
mond makes  a  fair  allusion  to  the  mental  differences  of  the  sexes, 
based  upon  the  foregoing,  but  his  critic  construes  his  remarks 
into  implying  female  incapacity  and  inferiority.  She  quotes  Top- 
inard  to  the  effect  that  ''the  brain  increases  with  the  use  we  make 
of  it." 

Dr.  Hammond  defends  his  position  by  asserting  that  the  men- 
tal differences  of  the  sexes  are  due  to  women  not  having  availed 
themselves  of  the  advantages  offered  them  by  civilization.  He 
does  not  deny  that  there  are  some  female  brains  of  superior 
weight  and  that  some  women  have  excelled,  mentally,  but  as  a 
rule  he  holds  that  women  are  logically  defective. 

Romanes  alleges  for  women  a  comparative  absence  of  origi- 
nality, particularly  in  the  higher  levels  of  intellectual  work,  but 
there  is  no  disparity  in  powers  of  acquisition  after  adolescence; 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  43 1 

young  girls  being  more  acquisitive  than  boys  of  the  same  age. 
After  develppment  the  male  has  the  greater  power  of  amassing 
knowledge.  Woman's  information  is  less  wide  and  deep  and 
thorough  than  that  of  a  man.  In  musical  execution  he  concedes 
equality.  The  female  lacks  judgment  and  impartiality,  but  is 
more  refined  in  her  sense  faculties,  her  perceptions  are  more 
rapid,  thoughts  swifter,  but  superficial.  Her  will  control  is  less, 
her  temper  is  unstable  and  emotions  shallow.  Coyness,  caprice, 
vanity,  love  of  display  and  admiration  for  pageants,  society  and 
even  ''scenes,"  characterize  her.  Romanes  concurs  with  Lecky : 
*'In  the  courage  of  endurance  females  are  superior,  but  their 
passive  courage  is  not  so  much  fortitude  which  bears  and  defies, 
as  resignation  which  bears  and  bends.  They  rarely  love  truth, 
though  they  adore  what  they  call  'the  truth,'  or  opinions  derived 
from  others,  and  hate  vehemently  those  who  differ  from  them. 
Their  thinking  is  a  mode  of  feeling,  they  are  generous  but  not  in 
opinion.  They  persuade  rather  than  convince  and  value  belief 
as  a  source  of  consolation  rather  than  as  a  faithful  expression  of 
the  reality  of  things." 

Romanes  attributes  all  this  to  their  not  having  enjoyed  the 
same  educational  advantages  as  men,  and  accords  women  pre- 
eminence in  affection,  sympathy,  devotion,  self-denial,  modesty, 
long-suffering,  reverence,  religious  feeling  and  morality.  Fem- 
inine taste  is  good  in  small  matters  but  untrustworthy  where  intel- 
lectual judgment  is  required.  He  attributes  much  to  the  coarser 
nature  of  man  suppressing  female  chances  for  equality,  and  holds 
that  the  coyness,  caprice  and  allied  weaknesses  and  petty  deceits 
are  acquired  and  inherited  self-defense  traits,  intensified  by  natu- 
ral and  sexual  selection. 

We  have  room  only  to  indicate  some  important  matters  that 
were  wholly  neglected  or  but  merely  hinted  at  by  the  writers. 

The  processes  of  development  known  as  embryology  alone 
settle  the  matter  of  sex  differentiation,  and  proclaim  woman  to 
be  a  very  highly  organized  being — exquisitely  adjusted  to  an  im- 
portant life  relation,  that  dominates  her  intellectually  as  well  as 
physically,  affording  her  the  advantage  of  mental  refinements  and 
the  disadvantage  of  physical  inferiority.  In  the  offspring  there 
is  a  fusion  of  advantageous  traits  that  at  first  belong  to  both 


432  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

sexes  unequally;  acquired  beauties  of  form  or  character  that 
sexual  selection  perpetuates  and  perfects.  The  mental  and  phys- 
ical superiority  of  the  average  male  needs  the  amiable  governance 
of  the  female  disposition.  This  is  most  apparent  in  mining  coun- 
tries where  males  preponderate  and  unconsciously  grow  coarse 
in  their  manners  and  ways  of  thinking. 

The  microscope  has  transferred  the  conception  of  degrees  of 
intelligence  from  gross  to  finer  morphology.  Mere  brain  weight 
counts  for  nothing,  except  for  the  crudest  generalizations.  Of 
more  consequence  are  the  relative  quantities  of  white  and  gray 
matter  in  brains,  the  associating  nerve  bundles,  that  pass  in  show- 
ers of  minute  telegraph  lines  between  brain  parts,  and  of  equal, 
if  not  transcendant,  importance,  the  disposition  and  development 
of  the  blood  vessels.  Also  given  two  brains  exactly  alike  a  dif- 
ference in  the  heart's  ability  to  supply  blood  to  the  brain  will 
determine  stupidity  in  one  and  intellect  in  the  other.  Intelligence 
depends  more  upon  the  quantitative  relating  fibers  of  parts  of  the 
brain  than  upon  weights,  and  a  forty-ounce  brain  may  have  a 
more  intricate  microscopic  development  that  one  that  weighs 
fifty  ounces. 

The  normal  brain  exists  in  ratios  related  to  muscular  develop- 
ment and  the  brain-weighing  methods  fully  demonstrate  that 
woman  is  the  equal  of  man  in  this  particular ;  that  is,  in  propor- 
tion to  physical  development  there  is  no  difference  in  the  asso- 
ciated brain  quantity  in  the  sexes. 

New  avenues  are  opening  up  to  women  and  decades  change 
our  views  concerning  women's  capacities.  Let  there  be  the  full- 
est chance  for  her  development.  She  cannot  surpass  in  certain 
matters,  but  let  opportunity  and  not  a  priori  prejudice  settle  what 
she  can  and  cannot  do.  It  is  idle  to  fear  that  she  will  become 
the  intellectual  and.  physical  monster  of  Bulwer's  Coming  Race. 
There  are  physiological  reasons  that  set  limits  for  both  sexes. 

The  Neanderthal  skull  was  found  in  a  cavern  near  Diissel- 
dorf  in  1856  in  a  diluvial  stratum  associated  with  a  human  skele- 
ton and  bones  of  extinct  species  of  animals.  The  skull  presents 
striking  peculiarities ;  it  has  no  forehead,  but  the  eyebrow  ridges 
are  excessively  developed,  the  bones  are  thick  and  heavy,  the 
shape  elliptical,  sutures  nearly  all  consolidated  and  the  occipital 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  433 

region  is  very  protuberant;  it  is  dolicocephalic,  the  capacity  be- 
ing 1220  c.c.  A  skull  from  Engis,  Belgium,  was  somewhat  simi- 
lar, and  Prof.  Moorehead,  of  Ohio,  reports  having  found  many 
similar  crania  in  the  tombs  of  the  mound  builders.  The  jaw  of 
La  Naulette,  of  Belgium,  was  associated  with  elephant  and  rhi- 
noceros remains,  but  many  additional  corroborative  findings 
merely  assign  an  earlier  date  to  the  discoveries  mentioned. 

Welcker  asserts  that  short  men  incline  more  to  wide  heads  and 
tall  men  to  long  heads,  which  may  prove  to  be  the  main  issues  in 
the  much-discussed  matter  of  cephalic  length  and  width  of  races. 

Brain  size  is  no  indication  of  the  amount  of  intellect.  The 
sensory  areas  of  the  brain  are  necessary  to  intellect.  The  frontal 
lobes  are  necessary  to  the  highest  intellect.  Broca  confirmed  this. 
The  more  intellectual  brain  parts  act  as  checks  upon  the  propensi- 
ties. Shuttleworth  examined  500  idiot  brains  and  500  of  chil- 
dren in  a  normal  school,  and  found  no  apparent  difference  in  size. 
A  poorly  developed  part  of  the  brain  may  cause  loss  of  intellect. 
Attempts  to  localize  insanities  such  as  melancholia  and  mania 
in  the  brain  are  absurd.  Many  brain  physiologists  lack  knowl- 
edge of  psysics  and  chemistry,  and  often  mistake  conditions  for 
materials  and  fancy  that  light,  heat,  electricity  and  sound,  are 
things  instead  of  modes  of  motion. 

Cuvier's  brain  weighed  sixty-four  ounces,  Gambetta's  only 
thirty-nine  ounces.  Spitzka  claimed  that  Cuvier's  weight  repre- 
sented healed  up  hydrocephalus  and  not  intellect.  Cuvier's  treat- 
ment of  Lamarck  indicated  that  he  lacked  the  higher  sentiments. 
Thirty  years  averages  the  attainment  of  the  full  insight  and  size 
of  the  human  brain.  Topinard  quotes  Colin  that  the  mouse  has 
more  brain  than  man  in  proportion  to  his  body,  and  thirteen  times 
more  than  the  horse  and  eleven  times  more  than  the  elephant. 

In  the  chapter  on  language  there  is  mention  of  the  speech 
center  in  the  right-handed  person  being  on  the  left  side  of  the 
brain  and  of  its  being  a  part  of  the  symbolic  field  concerned  in 
movements  of  the  hand  and  face,  so  that  writing  with  the  right 
hand  has  a  close  association  with  the  ability  to  speak  in  adjoin- 
ing parts  of  the  brain. 

Herbert  Spencer^^  states:     "While  the  rudimentary  nervous 

"Synthetic  Philosophy. 


434  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

system  consisting  of  a  few  threads  and  minute  centers  is  very 
much  scattered,  its  increase  of  relative  size  and  increase  of  com- 
plexity go  hand  in  hand  with  increased  concentration  and  in- 
creased multiplicity  and  variety  of  connections.  Gray  matter 
contains  five  times  as  many  capillaries  as  white,  based  on  cubed 
averages  from  Kolliker's  plates,  and  from  this  he  infers  greater 
composition  and  decomposition  in  gray  areas.  The  conditions 
essential  to  nervous  action  are  continuity  of  nerve  substance,  ab- 
sence of  much  pressure,  heat  within  certain  limits,  suitable  quan- 
tity and  quality  of  blood  supply,  waste  must  be  fully  met  by  re- 
pair, nerves  are  capable  of  exhaustion,  and  they  require  an  ap- 
preciable time  to  convey  impressions,  every  part  of  the  nervous 
system  is  every  instant  traversed  by  waves  of  molecular  change — 
here  strong  and  there  induced  by  the  primary  waves  now  arising 
in  this  place  and  now  in  that,  and  each  nervous  act  helps  to  ex- 
cite the  general  vital  processes  while  it  achieves  some  particular 
vital  process.  The  recognition  of  this  fact  discloses  a  much 
closer  kinship  between  the  functions  of  the  nervous  system  and 
organic  functions  at  large  than  appears  on  the  surface.  Though 
unlike  the  pulses  of  the  blood  in  many  respects,  the  pulses  of 
molecular  motion  are  like  them  in  being  perpetually  generated 
and  diffused  throughout  the  body,  and  they  are  also  like  them  in 
this,  that  the  centrifugal  waves  are  comparatively  strong  while 
the  centripetal  wayes  are  comparatively  feeble.  To  which  analo- 
gies must  be  added  that  the  performance  of  its  office  by  every 
part  of  the  body,  down  even  to  the  smallest,  just  as  much  depends 
on  the  local  gushes  of  nervous  energy  as  it  depends  on  the  local 
gushes  of  the  blood. 

Spencer^^  defines  growth  as  increase  in  size  and  development 
as  increase  in  structure,  hence  the  one  does  not  imply  the  other 
always,  the  finer  construction  of  an  educated  brain  may  occupy 
less  space  that  a  similar  organ  in  the  hydrocephalic  idiot. 

In  ants  the  head  ganglia  are  very  large,  and  in  the  Hymenop- 
tera  larger  than  in  the  less  intelligent,  as  in  the  case  of  beetles. 

A  factor  in  brain  evolution  was  in  the  change  of  a  four- 
handed  animal  using  all  such  members  also  as  feet  into  a  two- 

"Ibid. 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  435 

handed  animal,  causing  the  forward  hands,  and  of  course  the 
brain  part  regulating  them,  to  be  more  highly  specialized,  for 
more  complexity  of  such  a  brain  part  must  necessarily  follow. 

Dr.  Hancock,  of  Chicago,  suggested  to  me  that  the  absence  of 
convolutions  in  the  bird's  brain  could  be  owing  to  the  absence  of 
pressure  of  the  cranium,  which  in  turn  is  due  to  the  abundance 
of  room  for  growth  of  both  skull  and  brain  in  the  egg. 

The  brain  of  the  cockroach  is  less  specialized.  This  insect  is 
one  of  the  very  oldest  and  retains  its  ancient  nerve  centers,  but 
the  locust's  brain  is  highly  developed.^*  The  ants  and  bees  have 
the  highest  insect  brains,  as  shown  by  Dujardin,  Diet  and  Flagel. 
These  brains  of  the  social  insects,  ants  and  bees,  are  more  compli- 
cated than  other  winged  insects  with  greater  complexity  of  the 
folds  of  the  folded  disc-like  bodies  capping  the  double  stalk  of 
other  organs. 

The  shark's  medulla  oblongata  is  often  the  largest  part  of  the 
brain,  but  in  bony  fishes  it  becomes  smaller.  In  the  sharks  when 
the  medulla  is  large  there  are  swellings  analogous  to  interverte- 
bral ganglia  on  the  roots  of  the  vagi  nerves  on  the  sides  of  the 
fourth  ventricle.  Food  proclivities  predominate  in  the  sharks 
and  the  teleosts  are  not  so  voracious,  owing  to  a  development  of 
higher  faculties  so  that  function  and  structure  are  associated  in 
this  respect.  The  lower  grades  of  fishes  rush  straight  toward 
their  food  without  hesitation,  while  the  higher  grade  hang  back 
and  inspect  the  food  from  a  distance,  exhibiting  the  results  of 
higher  brain  development,  causing  them  to  adopt  the  wisest  and 
safest  course.  The  shark  is  greedy  and  uses  the  brute  force  of 
intelligence ;  other  fishes  are  more  cautious  and  inclined  to  strat- 
egy. And  a  measure  of  what  vulgarly  passes  for  bravery  may 
be  made  in  the  recklessness  of  the  shark  and  other  fishes  of  low 
intelligence  as  compared  with  the  actions  of  other  animals  who 
exercise  caution. 

A  rudimentary  part  of  the  brain  known  as  the  pineal  body  or 
gland  is  larger  before  than  after  birth,  and  in  some  lizards  has 
been  found  to  exist  as  an  eye  on  top  of  their  heads,  the  eye 
structure  being  plainly  visible  under  the  microscope.     This  loss 

"  Am.  Nat.,  Apr.  and  May,  1881,  A.  S.  Packard,  Jr. 


436  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

of  the  third  eye  is  no  more  remarkable  than  the  conversion  of  the 
swimming  bladders  of  fishes  into  lungs  or  the  gills  into  thyroids, 
or  tlrat  a  long  intestine  should  shrink  into  the  troublesome  vermi- 
form appendix  of  man. 

The  pons  develops  with  increase  of  the  cerebellar  hemis- 
pheres.^^ The  optic  lobe  predominates  in  fishes  and  birds.  The 
cerebrum  appears  to  be  a  secondary  projection  from  other  lobes. 
The  attempts  to  preserve  a  better  balance  in  the  erect  position 
and  to  coordinate  other  movements  is  the  great  factor  in  creation 
of  fibrils  in  the  central  nervous  system.  The  destruction  of  these 
fibrils  will  interfere  with  correct  movements.  Cell  processes  are 
less  rich  the  lower  the  animal. ^"^ 

Waldeyer  in  1891  announced  a  theory  of  neurons,  essentially 
that  nerves  were  projected  from  the  nerve  cells,^^  and  Schafer  am- 
plified the  subject,^^  but  by  reference  to  my  Comparative  Physiolo- 
gy and  Psychology,  p.  157,  1883,  it  will  be  seen  that  I  antedated 
Waldeyer  by  ten  years  in  a  lecture  in  188 1.  As  an  addition  to 
the  explanation  I  said  that  the  neuron  theory  is  not  strictly  a 
rule  for  nerves  may  be  laid  down  in  tissues  before  the  nerve  cell 
appears,  I  would  further  suggest  that  when  forces  travel  in 
definite  directions  the  granules  become  encapsulated  and  form 
cells  and  nerve  coverings,  so  when  there  is  diffusion  of  impulses 
the  nerve  granules  remain  uncovered,  but  when  directions  are 
definite  then  the  nerve  cell  appears  and  develops  the  nerve  strands 
from  it  as  a  center. 

Mind  includes  every  life  activity  for  what  corresponds  to  the 
sympathetic  nervous  system  of  man  regulating  his  unconscious 
physiological  processes  is  the  mental  apparatus  of  the  inverte- 
brates. 

The  mental  mechanism  and  workings  are  best  understood  in 
their  simplest  aspects.  A  boy  could  not  master  a  Corliss  engine 
till  the  main  principles  are  understood  and  these  are  best  learned 
in  the  simplest  engines. 

^^Gegenbaur,  p.  510. 

'**  Spitzka,  Journal  Nervous  and  Mental  Dis.,  Oct.,  1879,  p.  629. 
"  Deutsche  Med.  Woch.  Ueber  Einege  neue  Forschungen  im  Gebeite 
der  Anatomic  d.  Centralnervuen  systems. 
''  Brain,  p.  134,  1893. 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  437 

In  my  previous  work,  referred  to/**  I  suggest  that  the  brain 
lobes  have  been  formed  by  development  of  simpler  ganglia,  such 
as  the  swellings  on  the  sensory  nerves  near  the  spinal  cord,  known 
as  intervertebral  ganglia,  and  that  the  stoppage  or  diversion  of 
impulses  is  a  function  of  these  bodies,  which  are  large  on  the 
acoustic  nerves  of  fishes,  probably  to  blunt  sounds  of  no  use  to 
the  fish.  The  cerebellum  being  composed  of  these  blunting  gan- 
glia, excision  therefore  does  not  caitse  noticeable  results. 

The  foremost  portion  of  the  brain,  called  the  prefrontal  lobes, 
are,  according  to  Dana,-*^  and  other  specialists  in  nervous  dis- 
eases, concerned  in  volition  and  the  power  of  self-control,  concen- 
tration of  thought  and  attention  (Ferrier).  They  form  a  high 
association  centre.  Injuries  of  this  part  of  the  brain  produce 
changes  of  character,  indicated  by  irritability,  mental  enfeeble- 
ment,  lack  of  power  to  concentrate  the  mind  or  to  control  the 
acts  or  emotions.  A  case  is  reported^^  of  prefrontal  brain  tumor 
with  loss  of  memory  of  recent  events,  emotionalism,  loss  of  de- 
cency, shame  and  propriety.  He  grew  sleepy,  dull,  apathetic,  lost 
all  attention  for  any  length  of  time,  and  his  lack  of  judgment  was 
remarked.  Slight  paralysis  of  lower  right  face,  and  recovery 
on  removal  of  a  tumor  from  the  left  prefrontal  tip  of  lobe.  A 
boy  named  R.  S.  King,  in  1880,  injured  the  front  of  his  forehead, 
•exposing  a  triangular  part  of  the  brain,  the  side  was  not  recorded, 
and  some  one  cut  off  the  protruding  piece  of  brain,  after  which 
the  boy  became  ungovernable,  developed  a  reckless  disposition, 
and  was  drowned  while  swimming. 

The  forehead  of  the  well-known  Laura  Bridgman  grew  larger 
as  her  education  progressed. 

The  importance  of  the  frontal  lobe  in  mental  states  is  con- 
ceded by  all  writers  on  the  brain.^^ 

Dr.  Alex.  Hedlicka^^  says  that  white  children  present  more 
diversity,  negro  children  more  uniformity  of  physical  character- 
istics which  increases  as  time  passes.     In  the  black  the  forehead 

"Comp.  P.  and  P.,  p.  180. 

^"Diseases  of  the  Nervous  System,  p.  372. 

^^  Lancet,  Feb.  8,  1902,  p.  363. 

^^  Gowers,  Diseases  of  the  Brain,  p.  178. 

^Am.  Anthropologist,  Nov.,  1898. 


438  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

is  narrower,  the  face  more  prognathic,  the  malar  bones  are  larger, 
the  nose  is  shorter,  the  lips  more  prominent,  the  mouth  is  broader, 
the  teeth  are  stronger,  the  dentition  is  more  regular,  the  uvula  is 
shorter  and  stouter,  the  lower  jaw  is  higher  and  stronger;  the 
colored  girl  before  puberty  resembles  the  boy  more  than  the  white 
girl  does. 

Skulls  of  Europeans  have  increased  in  size  since  historic 
times,  and  civilization  has  raised  the  anterior  and  flattened  the 
occipital  parts  pi  the  skull,  according  to  Abbe  Frere,  of  the  An- 
thropological Museum  of  Paris. 

Broca  further  shows  that  cultivation  of  the  mind  and  intellec- 
tual work  augments  the  size  of  the  brain  and  this  increase  chiefly 
affects  the  anterior  lobes.  Parchappe  found  the  frontal  lobe  in 
men  of  learning  larger  than  in  common  working  men. 

The  frontal  lobes  are  centres  of  inhibition.  When  impulses 
cease  to  be  controlled  by  mentaHty  the  passions  reign  unbridled. 

As  what  one  does  must  alter  his  brain  shape,  it  can  be  con- 
ceived that  a  musician  would  have  a  special  development  of  brain 
and  his  reasoning  centers  in  the  forehead  would  be  connected 
strands,  concerned  in  music,  such  as  his  hearing  center  being 
large  and  associated  with  his  optic  recognition  of  musical  notes 
with  his  artistic  brain  records.  The  mechanic  would  have  hand 
centers  developed  more  in  the  brain,  an  editor  would  have  special 
growth  of  the  writing  center,  connected  with  his  pen  hand. 

A  large  lower  jaw  or  mastiff  mouth  denotes  resolution,  deter- 
mination, and  belongs  to  heads  that  have  made  a  noise  in  the 
world,  showing  that  while  originally  a  large  jaw  and  its  asso- 
ciated muscles  could  have  been  best  adapted  to  fierce  carniverous 
habits,  it  does  not  denote  mere  brutality  in  a  man,  for  it  can  be 
subordinated  by  a  large  brain.  The  relations  of  the  brain  as  a 
regulator  of  the  viscera  might  suggest  that  rapacity  and  want  of 
consideration  for  others  could  be  associated  with  special  develop- 
ment of  centers  for  intestines  in  the  brain,  but  a  more  important 
factor  would  be  the  faulty  intellect,  either  in  memory,  associa- 
tion, imagination,  or  defective  inhibitory  or  higher  reasoning 
powers,  which  leaves  the  original  animal  rapacity  merely  changed 
as   to  the   kinds   of   things   grabbed   for,   the   intestinal   centres 


EVOLUTION    OF    THE    BRAIN.  439 

being  those  for  acquisitiveness  primarily,  and  later  civilization, 
merely  facilitating  means  for  the  ultimate  ingestion. 

Joseph  Jastrow^^  sums  up  the  difficulties  and  advantages  of 
the  comparative  method,  dwelling  upon  many  of  the  lower  ani- 
mals being  more  fully  developed  at  birth.  "With  such  creatures 
as  the  cod  fish,  the  turtle,  or  fly  catcher,  there  is  nothing  that  can 
be  called  infancy."  (Fiske.)  He  refers  to  Spalding's  observa- 
tion of  chickens  who  from  the  shell  follow  the  movements  of  flies 
and  accurately  pick  at  them.  Man,  Jastrow  notes,  attains  his 
high  intellectual  position  by  entering  the  world  the  most  helpless 
of  living  kind,  but  because  less  freighted  with  the  ingrained 
habits  of  his  ancestors,  is  he  freer  to  develop  habits  of  his  own. 
"It  is  babyhood  that  has  made  man  what  he  is."  (Fiske.) 
Motherly  devotion  and  affection,  fatherly  interest  'and  supervi- 
sion, extend  over  a  larger  and  longer  period  as  the  species  is  more 
and  more  highly  developed,  until  among  the  highest  races  of  man 
it  continues  in  a  modified  form  through  life,  and  in  this  modified 
form  contributes  to  the  development  of  the  sentiments  of  kinship, 
family  pride,  altruism,  and  many  social  virtues.  Thus  human 
superiority  can  be  referred  to  the  infant  entering  life  in  a  much 
less  mature  condition  than  the  young  of  other  species. 

In  Africa,  Herbert  Spencer  observes,  the  children  are  absurdly 
precocious  and  sharp  under  puberty,  and  that  period,  as  with  the 
Hindoos,  appearing  to  muddle  their  brains,  when  their  ability  to 
receive  new  ideas  appears  to  be  lost.  The  Sandwish  Islanders 
are  quick  at  learning,  but  are  poor  thinkers.  The  New  Zealand- 
ers  are  in  the  first  ten  years  smarter  than  English  boys,  but  not 
afterwards. 

Primitive  people  are  more  like  one  another  than  are  individ- 
uals of  a  higher  mental  type,  and  there  is  greater  individuality 
among  the  educated  than  the  uneducated.  This  lack  of  pliability 
and  of  independence  and  prolonged  education  results  in  rigidity 
of  customs,  thought  and  habit,  and  the  keeping  up  of  meaning- 
less customs  and  an  unyielding  conservatism. 

Comparing  infant  and  animal  traits  he  refers  to  the  playful- 
ness of  children  and  kittens.     Curiosity,  inventiveness,  dislike  of 

^  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Nov.,  1892,  p.  35. 


440  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ridicule,  love  of  being  fondled,  craving  for  attention,  with  jeal- 
ousy and  anger  when  neglected,  the  ability  to  distinguish  persons 
even  though  the  dress  is  changed,  the  difference  between  visitors, 
beggars  and  friends  of  the  family.  Also  the  savage  and  childish 
peculiarities  are  often  alike.  In  both  the  savage  and  child  there 
is  instability  of  character,  impulsiveness,  an  easy  and  quick  tran- 
sition from  one  series  of  emotions  to  their  opposites,  violent  pas- 
sion upon  slight  provocation,  with  intense  pleasure  in  trifles,  joy 
in  brilliant  and  startling  sense  impressions,  a  narrow  range  of 
susceptibilities,  with  the  self-centering  emotions  of  fear,  anger, 
jealousy,  vanity  prominent. 

A  child  in  pain  is  appeased  by  candy,  its  anger  forgotten  in  a 
new  picture  book.  Attention  is  attracted  by  a  single  object  until 
fatigued.  Merriment  is  similarly  savage  and  childlike.  Spencer 
speaks  of  the  savage  having  the  mind  of  a  man  and  passions  of  a 
child,  or  exhibiting  his  adult  passions  in  a  childish  manner.  Both 
have  difficulty  in  pronouncing  certain  sounds,  inaccuracy  of  artic- 
ulation, a  skipping  of  parts  of  sentences,  etc. 

''The  mind  of  the  savage,"  says  Sir  John  Lubbock,  "like  that 
of  the  child,  is  easily  fatigued  and  will  then  give  random  answers 
to  spare  himself  the  trouble  of  thought." 

Galton  tells  of  the  Damara  who  never  generalizes  and  who, 
"knowing  a  road  perfectly  from  A  to  B  and  B  to  C,  would  have 
no  idea  of  a  straight  cut  from  A  to  C;  he  has  no  map  of  the 
country  in  his  mind,  but  an  infinity  of  local  details."  He  watched 
a  Damara  trying  to  understand  that  twice  two  made  four  with- 
out being  able  to  do  so,  and  at  the  same  time  a  spaniel  trying  to 
make  out  whether  all  her  six  puppies  were  present.  The  dog 
and  savage  were  about  alike  in  ability  to  count  properly. 

In  the  decay  of  the  mind  also  the  law  is  that  the  latest,  least 
firm  acquisitions  are  first  lost,  and  the  older,  more  deeply  im- 
pressed, more  primitive  memories  are  longest  retained.  Gesture 
language  remains  when  spoken  language  is  diseased  or  lost. 

Again,  idiots  resemble  a  continuance  of  infancy  in  some  re- 
spects, a  tenacious,  mechanical  memory  at  times,  they  delight  in 
sense  impressions,  mimicry  of  noises,  cruelty,  and  the  like. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 
THE  SENSES  AND  FEELINGS. 

There  is  nothing  in  the  intellect  that  has  not  reached  it 
through  the  senses  (Aristotle),  is  a  saying  both  time-honored 
and  justified.  The  functions  of  sensation  are  to  indicate  changes 
in  the  environment,  to  symbolize  reality,  to  stimulate  higher 
activities  and  prompt  the  formation  of  complex  conceptions. 
Sensation  may  be  approximately  defined  as  a  resultant  of  exter- 
nal impressions. 

A  sensory  impression  involves  a  sending  in  of  shocks  from  the 
outward  organ,  such  as  the  eye  or  ear,  to  the  brain,  and  a  definite 
adjustment  of  the  conducting  paths  and  receiving  apparatus  must 
occur,  and  in  addition  some  sort  of  a  motor  reflex  act  follows ; 
that  is,  some  muscles  are  excited  to  move,  though  the  excitement 
may  be  arrested  in  what  is  known  as  inhibition  or  checking,  and 
in  addition  every  sensation  and  motion  affects  the  blood  distribu- 
tion, so  that  sensations  are  not  simple  matters  in  their  results. 
Blood  is  attracted  to  the  route  of  the  sensation,  and  when  often 
repeated  the  sensation  will  cause  a  definite  action  of  blood  ves- 
sels to  resupply  the  waste  caused  by  the  action  of  the  center  and 
nerves. 

A  tree  is  recorded  in  the  visual  part  of  the  brain,  not  as  a  pic- 
ture, but  by  certain  effects  upon  that  part  accompanied  by  blood- 
vessel action,  and  in  addition  to  this  there  is  the  sensation  experi- 
enced by  the  head  and  eye  muscles,  movements  needed  in  seeing 
the  tree.  A  very  tall  tree  would  add  the  effect  of  the  head  being 
thrown  backward  to  see  the  high  branches ;  therefore,  impres- 
sions, however  apparently  simple,  are  really  compound,  and  en- 
gage considerably  more  than  one  part  of  the  brain,  or  even  more 
than  one  organ  of  the  body.  These  conjoined  records  of  mole- 
cular and  molar  movement  make  up  the  memory. 

So  several  senses,  as  that  of  touch,  or  the  muscular  sense,  can 
be  engaged  in  a  single  observation,  as  the  sight  itself  and  the 

441 


442  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

accompanying  feelings  of  parts  of  the  body  moving  at  the  same 
time,  the  nerve  fibrils  and  blood  vessels  associating  the  centers 
of  activity. 

Telegraph  wires  are  traversed  by  vibrations  of  constant  cur- 
rents, much  as  the  animal  nerves  are  assumed  to  be  in  movement, 
and  the  terminal  mechanism  remains  undisturbed  by  the  current, 
so  far  as  signals  are  concerned,  until  interruptions  in  the  passage 
of  the  current  take  place.  When  the  operator  breaks  or  destroys 
the  currents  for  an  instant  at  one  end  of  the  line,  this  break  be- 
comes apparent  at  the  other  end  in  a  movement  of  the  relay  arma- 
ture. The  nervous  system  is  readjusted  constantly,  so  that  what 
were  stimulants  at  one  time  may  cease  to  be  so  later.  The  miller 
sleeps  in  his  mill,  but  awakes  when  the  machinery  stops.  Light 
falls  regularly  upon  the  eye,  but  it  is  the  interferences  with  light 
that  we  see;  partly  deaf  persons  may  hear  best  in  a  great  noise, 
because  the  vibrations  imparted  by  the  noise  enables  changes  to 
be  appreciated. 

Vision  or  light  has  been  defined  as  the  color  sense,  the  space 
sense,  and  as  that  ability  to  become  aware  of  objects  without 
apparent  contact. 

In  the  visual  perception  of  space  there  are  degrees  of  dis- 
tinctness of  retinal  images,  dim  or  clear,  according  to  magnitude 
and  distance,  the  image  will  be  small  or  large,  enabling  judgment 
of  distance. 

Kepler  in  1604  explained  the  structure  of  the  human  eye  and 
traced  the  causes  of  imperfect  vision  in  the  converging  of  rays 
of  light  before  and  behind  the  retina.  That  is,  the  lines  of  vision 
met  too  soon  or  too  late  to  be  properly  concentrated  upon  the  sen- 
sitive part  of  the  eye,  through  the  eyeball  being  too  long  or  too 
short.  Kepler's  laws  of  the  planetary  movements  place  him  far 
in  advance  of  all  previous  astronomers. 

The  notion  that  birds  have  dull  senses  and  that  sight  is  their 
main  sense  appears  to  be  a  mistake,  as  their  hearing  is  acute  and 
they  can  smell  as  well  as  dogs.^  Men  differ  among  themselves 
as  to  acuteness  of  sight,  out-door  occupation  sharpening  this 
ability.     The  Tartars  are  said  to  be  remarkably  keen  in  eyesight. 

The  pigment  spots  in  worms  are  rudimentary  eyes.      Light 

^  M.  X.  Raspail.  Smithsonian  Reports,  1897,  p.  367. 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  443 

brought  about  the  primitive  irritability  from  which  sight  was 
developed.  By  degrees  of  bleaching  of  the  pigment  of  the  retina 
we  estimate  colors,  between  red  and  violet  the  rapidity  of  light 
vibrations  is  392  trillion  to  757  trillion  vibrations  per  second. 
Such  physical  motions  themselves  are  not  sent  to  the  brain,  but 
are  translated  into  nerve  vibrations  which  the  brain  further  com- 
prehends as  having  come  from  a  special  sense  organ.  All  sensa- 
tion is  a  motion  of  particles  striking  the  protoplasm  or  cell  and 
accessory  organs  adapted  to  such  purpose,  as  terminal  rods,  hairs, 
etc.,  in  insects  and  other  animals.  Sensations  impress  us  by  their 
different  velocities,  modified  in  their  transmission  to  the  brain, 
and  an  excellent  demonstration  of  this  appears  in  the  softness  of 
the  auditory  and  hardness  of  the  optic  nerves,  hearing  being  con- 
cerned with  coarse  movements,  and  sight  with  extremely  fine 
ones. 

The  wave  lengths  passing  over  the  optic  nerve  are  interrupted 
by  acts  of  vision ;  for  instance,  when  the  sunlight  is  obstructed  by 
an  intervening  object  the  colorless  impression  may  be  made  upon 
the  retina,  but  when  colors  are  seen  a  chemical  substance  called 
rhodopsin  bleaches  in  the  order  of  yellowish-green  to  red.^  Ac- 
cording to  Boll,  light  perpetually  destroys  the  retinal  color  and 
darkness  regenerates  it.  Thus  in  the  space  of  a  wink  regenera- 
tion occurs,  and  the  constant  voluntary  and  involuntary  move- 
ment of  the  eyeball  enables  a  large  number  of  the  rods  and  cones 
of  the  retina  to  be  engaged,  affording  time  for  regeneration  of 
such  as  are  not  being  used  at  the  instant.     The  color  blind  are 

In  the  Journal  of  the  Royal  Microscopical  Society,  V.  iii,  No.  i,  p.  63, 
from  Arch.  Mikr.  Anatomie,  xvii,  p.  58,  1879,  is  a  diagram  of  a  visual  and 
another  of  an  acoustic  segment  compared.  The  eye  and  ear  of  the  highest 
animal  is  here  divested  of  all  such  accessory  appendages  as  cornea,  iris 
and  crystalline  lens,  pinna,  tympanum,  ossicles  and  labyrinth.  In  each  seg- 
ment the  nerve  dilates  into  a  nerve  cell  which  is  followed  by  a  protoplasmic 
visual  or  acoustic  cylinder  in  which  are  an  anterior  and  a  middle  nucleus 
and  a  rod-like  body  in  direct  connection  through  the  ganglionic  corpuscle 
with  the  nerve.  The  acoustic  cylinder  is  continued  into  a  nucleated  body 
which  though  not  separated  from  the  cylinder  by  membrane  seems  to  an- 
swer to  a  cell  of  the  vitreous  body  of  the  eye.  A  visual  segment  of  Buthus 
and  acoustic  of  Acridian  are  represented  in  the  diagrams. 

"Gamgee,  Physiological  Chemistry  of  the  Animal  Body,  p.  465. 


444  "^"^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

defective  in  these  chemical  impressions.  Where  the  pigment 
fails  to  bleach  or  changes  too  rapidly,  or  too  slowly,  color  aber- 
ration would  be  inevitable.  When  nutrition  is  interfered  with, 
as  by  cutting  off  the  circulation  to  visual  parts,  the  color  apprecia- 
tion would  be  lessened,  and  the  necessity  for  the  incessant  to  and 
fro  movements  of  the  eyeball  are  obvious  in  bringing  fresh  sets 
of  retinal  elements  to  bear  upon  the  object  seen.  Were  the  eye 
held  fast,  without  motion,  its  visual  power  would  be  weakened 
by  over-exercise  of  one  part  of  the  retina. 

David  Starr  Jordan^  observes  that  ''There  are  certain  powers 
possessed  by  childhood  which  grow  weak  or  disappear  with  ad- 
vancing age  or  wisdom,  until  at  last  all  recollection  of  them  is 
lost.  One  of  these  is  the  ability  to  recognize  shades  of  color  in 
ideas  or  objects  which  can  have  no  color  at  all.  Now  and  then 
some  trace  of  this  power  persists  through  life,  and  even  in  con- 
nection with  some  degree  of  maturity  of  judgment.  It  is  then 
looked  upon  as  a  mild  hallucination,  provoking  a  smile  of  sym- 
pathy or  of  incredulity,  but  not  regarded  by  the  person  himself, 
still  less  by  his  friends,  as  possessing  any  value  or  significance. 
Nevertheless  such  associations  have  a  degrees  of  psychological 
interest.  A  chapter  has  been  devoted  to  them  in  Francis  Gal- 
ton's  admirable  work,"^  an  interesting  essay  of  Word  Color  has 
been  very  recently  published  by  Prof.  Edward  Spencer,  of 
Moore's  Hill  College.^ 

In  his  youth  Prof.  Jordan  always  associated  the  idea  of  color 
with  letters  of  the  alphabet.  Of  later  years  the  discovery  that 
other  people  recognized  no  such  coloration  came  to  him  as  a  sur- 
prise. The  letter  R,  for  example,  always  called  up  the  idea  of 
greenness,  S  recalled  yellow,  X  scarlet,  and  so  on  through  the 
alphabet.  Some  persons  having  a  similar  association  'do  not 
attach  the  same  colors  to  the  letters.  Other  persons  have  had  an 
association  of  color  with  sounds.  Certain  ones  claim  to  play  the 
piano  by  color,  each  key  note  corresponding  to  a  color.  Jordan 
tells  of  the  occasional  association  of  colors  with  taste.  A  young 
girl  would  say  to  her -mother  that  this  food  "tasted  so  very  yellow 

^  Popular  Science  Monthly,  July,  1891. 

*  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty. 

°  Proceedings  Indiana  College  Association,  1889. 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  445 

that  I  cannot  eat  it."  She  was  reproached  for  such  eccentric 
notions  and  finally  outgrew  them. 

There  may  be  several  ways  of  accounting  for  such  abnormali- 
ties :  The  color  appreciation  centers  in  the  brain  could  be  erratic- 
ally connected  with  the  other  sense  centers  that  arouse  these  color 
imprsssions,  or  some  cells  and  fibres  that  ordinarily  respond  to 
color  impulses  have  been  misplaced,  but  the  greatest  probability 
is  that  the  child  has  unconsciously  been  impressed  by  certain 
colors  at  the  time  of  learning  the  letters,  possibly  by  a  colored 
primer,  by  views  of  lawns,  trees,  flowers,  etc.,  at  the  time  of 
struggling  with  the  retention  of  the  symbol,  or  of  the  word  con- 
taining the  special  letter  that  recalls  the  color.  Still  another  view 
would  be  that  by  aberrant  action  the  vibrations  induced  in  the 
special  sense  nerve,  or  its  terminal,  aroused  color-appreciation 
vibrations  in  the  same  terminals.  But  why  should  this  sensitive- 
ness be  confined  to  mere  letters  instead  of  objects  in  general? 
The  most  probable  explanation  seems  in  the  association  accident- 
ally of  the  letter  or  word  and  the  color  while  learning  the  letters. 
This  law  of  association  is  a  powerful  one,  and  explains  many 
other  matters  equally  mysterious  otherwise.  Even  to  the  extent 
of  inability  to  perform  certain  ordinary  acts  unless  certain  acci- 
dentally associated  conditions  were  simultaneously  experienced. 
Pupils  have  failed  to  pass  examinations  on  subjects  they  had 
learned  well  because  the  usual  room  was  not  used  during  the 
recitation. 

H.  E.  NewelP  mentions  the  instance  of  a  New  York  physician 
having  two  patients  with  this  faculty  abnormal.  One  of  them 
had  a  horror  of  all  words  in  which  the  letters  ch  were  placed,  and 
the  other  had  hysterics  at  a  certain  shade  of  blue. 

M.  d'Abbadie,"^  on  the  peculiarities  of  numerical  vision,  led  to 
a  discussion  in  which  M.  Jacques  Bertillon  related  that  he  con- 
nected deliberately  and  intentionally  each  number  as  he  was 
taught  with  some  object  in  the  garden,  and  thus  created  an  inde- 
structible association  of  ideas  between  the  figures  and  plants. 
Fractions  he  associated  with  clock-face  divisions,  but,  of  course, 
restricted  to  factors  of  60. 

'  The  Color  of  Words,  Popular  Science  Monthly,  Dec,  1887,  p.  257. 
'  Proceedings  Anthropological  Society.  Paris,  1886. 


446  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Such  instances  tend  to  prove  that  unconscious  association 
through  simultaneous  impressions,  received  at  the  time  of  learn- 
ing the  letters  or  numerals,  is  at  the  root  of  such  queer  matters. 
Memory  is  full  of  such  unconscious  relations  and  cause  us  to  re- 
mark, "What  made  me  think  of  that?" 

Hearing  is  a  matter  of  vibrations  sent  through  the  air  into 
the  ear  or  striking  the  hearing  organ  of  the  animal,  which  in  the 
case  of  the  male  mosquito  is  made  of  hair-like  antennae  on  his 
head.  Spaces  judged  by  the  ear,  as  well  as  directions  and  dis- 
tances, are  apt  to  be  very  faulty,  as  association  and  inference 
have  to  be  depended  upon  and  mistakes  are  frequent.  The  qual- 
ities of  sound  are  pitch  or  altitude,  tone  or  timbre,  volume  or 
amount,  loudness.  The  limits  of  pitch  are  the  number  of  vibra- 
tions determining  the  place  of  a  sound  in  the  scale  of  music.  Tone 
decides  between  music  or  noise,  a  matter  of  vibration  character. 
Volume  is  the  amplitude  of  the  vibrations.  Harmony,  discord, 
resonance,  by  sympathy  and  fusion  of  sensations,  with  two  noises 
making  a  silence,  and  the  vast  science  of  sound  in  general  is 
usually  merely  touched  upon  by  experimental  psychologists  and 
hardly  noticed  by  the  old-fashioned  essayists  on  the  mind. 

The  primitive  ear  consists  in  a  vesicle  filled  with  small  min- 
eral particles  called  otoliths,  and  supplied  with  nerve  bundles  dis- 
tributed in  its  walls.      The  reason  for  auditory  hairs  ending  in 

Experimental  psychologists  decide  upon  space  and  color  as  the  func- 
tions of  vision.  The  colors  being  divided  into  three  primary.  The  quality 
comprising  intensity,  saturation  and  tonality,  the  duration  being  larger 
than  impressions  as  after-images  show,  and  there  being  positive  and  nega- 
tive after-images.  The  color  perceived  is  often  affected  by  the  particular 
part  of  the  retina.    Color  blindness  is  for  red  or  green. 

The  strain  of  accommodation  may  affect  judgment  of  space  and  that 
of  convergence  is  concerned  in  magnitude  and  distance,  the  parallax  of 
motion  affords  judgment  of  distance,  and  perspective  that  of  either  dis- 
tance or  solidity,  and  landscapes  are  usually  clear  in  the  near  and  smoky 
or  hazy  in  the  far  distance,  and  with  binocular  parallax  distances  are  also 
judged.  The  distribution  of  light  and  shade  affords  judgment  of  form 
from  experience  and  the  artistic  imitation  of  it  produces  the  same  effect 
All  showing  how  composite  impressions  may  be,  and  that  many  things  be- 
side mere  simple  sensation  are  associated  with  every  sensory  act  to  enable 
us  to  profit  by  it,  such  as  experience,  comparison,  muscular  movements, 
blood  conditions  and  operation  of  other  senses  at  the  same  time. 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  447 

water  is  that  they  are  related  to  the  touch  sense  in  fishes  whose 
tufts  of  hair  enable  them  to  become  aware  of  motions  of  the 
water.^ 

It  is  difficult  to  determine  where  one  sense  ends  and  another 
begins  in  the  cases  of  touch  and  hearing,  in  low  notes  and  me- 
chanical vibrations  of  about  thirty  per  second  both  senses  appre- 
ciate the  same  thing.  A  deaf  person  may  accurately  estimate  the 
rhythm  of  the  low  notes  of  a  piano  through  his  touch  sense.  Sir 
John  Lubbock  has  demonstrated  the  ability  of  lower  animals  to 
be  affected  by  vibrations  that  are  too  high  and  too  low  for  man's 
eyesight  and  hearing.  Man  has  thus  either  lost  or  never  pos- 
sessed faculties  which  other  animals  retain  or  may  have  devel- 
oped. Persons  differ  between  themselves  in  their  ranges.  Most 
have  an  ear  only  for  notes  to  sixteen  thousand  vibrations  per  sec- 
ond, while  the  possible  range  is  placed  at  thirty-eight  thousand. 
At  the  same  time,  these  rapid  mechanical  motions  produce  sounds, 
and  these  sounds  are  the  lowest  bass  notes  of  music,  so  that  at  this 
point  we  have  ordinary  motions,  that  produce  visible  tremors  of 
the  largest  piano  strings,  converted  into  sound  energy.  If  you 
strike  the  highest  note  on  the  piano  the  vibrations  belonging  to  its 
sound  are  so  fine  as  not  to  be  seen,  so  that  sound  from  bass  to 
treble  consists  in  a  few  vibrations  to  very  many  vibrations  of  the 
strings  per  second.  The  number  of  vibrations  per  second  neces- 
sary to  produce  the  lowest  bass  sounds  heard  by  man  is  forty  per 
second ;  the  higher  notes  may  contain  as  many  as  40,(X)0  vibrations 
per  second,  the  range  being  only  to  sixteen  thousand  in  most  per- 
sons. 

Sir  John  Lubbock^  deduced  from  experiments  on  bees  the 
inference  that  they  hear  the  high  overtones  at  or  beyond  the  range 
of  hearing  of  man. 

Weber's  law  as  modified  by  Fechner  states  that  every  sensation  has  a 
certain  intensity  which  can  be  more  or  less  definitely  measured  in  relation 
to  stimulus.  Sensation  increases  in  intensity  in  an  arithmetical  ratio  as  the 
stimulus  increases  in  a  geometrical  ratio.  But  the  rule  is  approximate  and 
has  its  limitations.  Mathematics  are  thus  used  in  psychology  in  an  indirect 
measurement  of  sensation. 

*  Strieker's  Histology,  Max  Schultze,  p.  167. 
"American  Naturalist,  April,  1883,  p.  449. 


44S  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

The  special  senses  of  taste  and  smell  are  associated 
in  food  discrimination  to  such  an  extent  as  to  be  often  con- 
fused one  with  the  other.  As  might  be  imagined,  the  simpler 
reflex  organization  of  the  lower  invertebrates  relating  mouth  mo- 
tions to  these  senses,  grow  more  complex  the  higher  the  animal, 
until  considerable  brain  tissue  is  concerned.  For  example,  the 
infant  wants  to  eat  everything  it  sees,  and  its  arm  and  mouth  re- 
flexes respond  to  sight,  smell,  and  taste  in  endeavors  at  swallow- 
ing everything  visible,  including  its  fist  and  the  moon.  Olfaction 
is  the  main  food  discriminating  sense  below  the  primates,  the 
olfactory  lobes  at  the  base  of  many  lower  mammalian  brains 
being  very  large. 

In  1884  I  published  the  original  view  that  the  hippocampus 
major  related  the  olfactory  sense  to  the  eating  motions.  The  hip- 
pocampus major  passes  from  the  olfactory  nerve  roots  backward 
and  finally  curls  upward  and  forward  to  the  post-frontal  region, 
where  are  centres  for  the  lips,  tongue,  and  deglutitory  parts  gen- 
erally. The  Huxley-Owen  controversy  over  the  hippocampus 
minor  ended  in  the  former  demonstrating  its  presence  in  anthro- 
poid ape  brains.  The  animus  of  the  denial  was  to  show  a  radical 
difference  between  "lower  animals"  and  man  in  the  absence  of  a 
cerebral  part. 

I  am  not  aware  that  any  one  has  preceded  me  in  announcing 
the  probable  functions  of  the  hippocampi.  The  major  is  large 
and,  in  keeping  with  its  size,  must  have  subserved  some  very  im- 
portant life  relation,  and  what  is  more  likely,  considering  its  be- 
ginning and  termination,  its  relationship  to  other  brain  parts,  and 
its  zoological  distribution,  than  that  it  brought  the  smelling,  tast- 
ing, and  eating  apparatus  into  cooperation. 

In  man  and  the  higher  apes,  the  olfactory  has  given  way  to 
optic  intelligence  generally,  and  in  judging  of  food  wholesome- 
ness  the  eyesight  is  relied  upon  mainly,  which  would  account  for 
the  obsolescing  features  of  the  major  in  man,  and  the  absence  of 
the  minor  below  the  apes. 

The  minor  projects  into  the  occipital  lobe  in  the  region  allotted 
to  optic  intelligence.  The  relative  sizes  of  the  hippocampi  may 
be  explained  by  remembering  that  millions  of  years  may  have 
been  occupied  by  mammalia  with  olfaction  as  the  main  means  of 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  449 

food  discrimination  in  their  evolution,,  and  that  relatively  much 
less  time  has  elapsed  since  the  apes  and  man  first  appeared.  The 
hippocSmpus  minor  develops  as  the  optic  sense  becomes  the  supe- 
rior means  of  food  judgment;  and  as  the  olfactory  importance 
diminishes  the  hippocampus  major  degenerates. 

That  the  taste  and  olfactory  centres  are  not  definitely  deter- 
mined depends,  in  my  opinion,  upon  the  intimate  blending  of  these 
senses  with  motor  eating  centres,  paralysis  of  which  becomes  so 
noticeable  as  to  overshadow  the  sense  loss,  which  latter  may  be 
overlooked  or  regarded  as  not  necessarily  an  associated  derange- 
ment. Lesion  of  the  temporal  lobes  destroying  the  smelling  sense 
may  indicate  no  more  than  that  olfactory  fibres  pass  through  those 
parts.  Taste  has"  reflex  connections  of  a  lower  than  cerebral  na- 
ture that  regulate  many  involuntary  acts  concerned  in  eating,  but 
by  association  pretty  extensive  brain  distributions  are  also  con- 
cerned, more  particularly  optic,  and  the  glosso-labial  motor  areas 
near  the  sulcus  of  Rolando.  So  we  may  say  that  taste  and  smell 
are  more  generalized  than  centralized  through  the  brain,  and  that 
in  man  the  smelling  sense  is  losing  importance. 

Notwithstanding  the  large  size  of  the  olfactory  tract  at  its 
junction  with  the  brain,  the  smelling  centre  has  not  satisfactorily 
been  made  out.  •  There  are  many  portions  of  the  brain  the  func- 
tions of  which  have  not  been  discovered  because  present  methods 
of  observation  are  insufficient.  There  are  certain  phenomena  that 
follow  upon  injury  of  other  portions,  such  as  loss  of  sensation, 
elevation  of  bodily  temperature,  in  coordination,  vertigo,  but  as 
any  one  of  these  kinds  of  disturbances  may  be  produced  by  injury 
to  several  different  areas,  strictly  speaking  we  cannot  regard  such 
pathological  processes  as  indicating  physiological  centralization. 

With  smell,  taste  and  sight  direct  stimulation  is  impossible. 
Stimuli  are  modified  before  being  sent  in.  The  organs  transform 
the  stimulus,  probably  chemically.  In  smell  and  taste  we  have 
external  chemical  agencies,  in  sight  we  have  light  as  the  cause  of 
chemical  disintegration  in  the  sensory  cells ;  these  processes  in  the 
cells,  then,  serve  as  the  real  stimuli.  Taste,  smell  and  sight  are 
chemical  senses,  while  touch,  pressure  and  sound  are  mechanical. 
Different  stimuli  acting  on  the  same  end  organ  produced  the  same 
sensations.      Thus  mechanical  and  electrical  stimulations  of  the 


450  THE    EVOLUTION    OE    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

eye  produce  light  sensations.  Differences  in  qualities  of  sensa- 
tions are  due  to  differences  in  processes  in  stimulations  that  arise 
in  the  sense  organs,  primarily  in  the  character  of  the  physical 
stimuli,  and  secondarily  in  the  peculiarities  of  the  receiving  or- 
gans which  are  due  to  its  adaptation  to  the  stimuli. 

Democritus  observed  that  pressure  upon  the  nostrils  inter- 
fered with  his  sense  of  smell;  when  one  has  caught  a  cold  the 
swelling  of  the  membranes  exerts  this  same  pressure,  and  also 
cuts  off  the  smelling  ability.  Smell  depends  upon  odorous  sub- 
stances striking  the  membranes  of  the  nostrils,  these  odors  having 
regular  orbital  rotations  constant  for  each  substance.  What 
passes  for  the  sense  of  taste  is  very  largely  in  part  or  in  whole  the 
smelling  sense;  all  the  fine  differences  by  which  we  distinguish 
the  various  wines,  fruits  and  meats,  depend  mainly  upon  olfaction. 
Smell  is  developed  more  in  dark  races,  also  in  ruminants,  carniv- 
ora  and  the  wild  boar.  It  is  of  poor  service  to  human  beings, 
except  as  an  aid  to  the  sense  of  taste.  The  faculty  differs  greatly 
between  persons,  some  children  have  been  able  to  idntify  people 
by  smell. 

Taste  stimulates  the  taste  buds  of  the  tongue  through  solution 
and  chemical  disruptions,  rotations  and  impacts,  though  both 
touch  and  smelling  senses  are  at  times  confused  with  tasting  acts. 
Cold  and  heat  impair  the  tasting  ability.  Taste  appears  to  engage 
rapid  contacts  in  a  watery  medium,  and  smell  acts  by  allied  rota- 
tion of  particles  striking  the  nose  membranes.  Taste  is  divided 
into  primary  qualities  of  sour,  sweet,  bitter  and  salty ;  alkalinity  is 
related  to  salty  and  metallic  with  sour;  the  alkaline  is  probably 
made  up  of  salines,  and  sweet  with  metallic  and  saline.  Sweet 
salines  neutralize,  and  cause  insipidity.  Taste  is  thought  to  be 
antecedent  to  sight,  from  its  apparent  presence  in  low  organisms 
in  which  vision  has  not  developed. 

A  muscular  sense  has  been  suggested  for  some  reasons,  and 
denied  by  most  physiologists  as  merely  a  form  of  the  ordinary 
touch  sense.  Even  admitting  its  existence,  its  nature  is  still  ob- 
scure, owing  to  the  confusion  of  sensations  accompanying  muscu- 
lar action  with  the  notion  of  ordinary  sensation,  and  the  ambigu- 
ity of  the  terms  consciousness  of  motion  and  motor  conscious- 
ness, sometimes  confused  with  the  consciousness  ''initiating:"  mus- 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  45I 

cular  action ;  so  sensation,  motion  and  consciousness  are  confused 
in  talking  of  muscular  sense.  The  facts  to  explain  the  matter  lie 
in  active  movement,  the  consciousness  of  effort  and  great  discrim- 
inative ability.  The  theories  consist  in  that  of  touch,  the  epi- 
peripheral ;  that  of  muscle  pressure  upon  nerves,  the  ento-periph- 
eral ;  and  the  theory  of  effort-feeling,  the  central  motor  theory. 

According  to  Wundt,  the  ''general  sense"  precedes  all  others 
and  belongs  to  all  beings  endowed  with  mind.      It  includes  not 
only  the  external  skin  and  the  adjoining  areas  of  the  mucous 
membrane,  but  a  large  number  of  internal  organs  supplied  with 
sensory  nerves,  such  as  the  joints,  muscles,  tendons,  bones,  etc. 
The  general  sense  includes  four  specific,  distinct  sensational  sys- 
tems :    sensations  of  pressure,  heat,  cold  and  pain.     There  may  be 
mixtures  of  these  by  one  stimulus,  as  heat  and  pain,  or  pressure 
and  pain.     The  four  systems  are  homogeneous.      Pressure  sen- 
sations from  the  skin,  joints,  etc.,  are  grouped  as  touch  sensa- 
tions, and  are  distinguished  from  the  common  sensations,  which 
include  sensations  of  heat,  cold  and  pain,  and  those  sensations 
of  pressure  that  sometimes  arise  in  the  other  internal  organs. 
This  relates  to  ideas  and  feelings,  and  not  to  qualities  of  sensa- 
tions themselves.     Heat,  cold  and  pressure  internally  are  only  ex- 
•ceptionally  felt  under  abnormal  conditions.  On  the  other  hand,  all 
parts  of  the  skin  and  mucous  surface  adjoining  are  sensitive  to 
stimulation  of  pressure,  heat,  cold  and  pain.      The  degree  may 
vary  so  that  the  same  place  is  not  alike  for  all  sensations.     Sensi- 
tiveness to  pain  is  about  the  same  everywhere,  at  the  surface  or 
just  beneath.     But  certain  points  of  the  skin  appear  to  most  favor 
stimulation  for  heat,  cold  and  pressure;  these  are  pressure  spots, 
heat  spots  and  cold  spots;   spots  of  different  modes  do  not  coin- 
cide.    Still,  temperature  spots  always  receive  sensations  of  pres- 
sure and  pain  as  well,  and  a  pointed  hot  stimulus  applied  to  a  cold 
spot  always  causes  a  sensation  of  heat,  while  hot  spots  and  cold 
spots  react  with  their  adequate  sensation  to  properly  applied  me- 
chanical and  electrical  stimuli.      Pressure  and  pain  are  not  rela- 
tive to  each  other  or  to  the  two  temperature  sensations.     These 
heat  and  cold  sensations  are  not  only  different  but  contrasted. 
Pressure  and  heat,  pressure  and  pain,  cold  and  pain,  may  exist  as 
mixed  sensations ;    hot  and  cold  exclude  each  other  because  the 


452  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

only  possibilities  for  a  given  area  of  skin  are  a  sensation  of  heat, 
or  one  of  cold,  or  an  absence  of  both.  As  no  end  organ  has  been 
discovered  in  the  skin  for  the  determination  of  heat  and  cold  sen- 
sations, it  is  quite  likely  that  the  blood  or  the  blood  vessels  are 
the  conveyors  of  the  sense  of  heat  and  cold.  An  interesting 
question  is,  Why  does  extreme  cold  give  the  sensation  of  heat,  as 
in  handling  liquid  air,  and  why  does  the  feeling  of  heat  come  to 
the  person  who  is  freezing  to  death  ?  Heat  is  induced  by  an  ar- 
rest of  motion.  After  running  we  experience  the  heat  sensation. 
Extra  activity  of  the  circulation  gives  a  feeling  of  heat,  and  a 
fever  is  accompanied  with  a  rapid  pulse.  An  ability  to  appreciate 
degrees  of  heat  would  be  important  to  animals  generally,  fishes 
would  be  enabled  to  judge  of  localities  such  as  the  gulf  stream,, 
and  the  reptiles  of  the  far-off  ages  in  the  hot  seas  did  not  need 
internal  heat  generation  and  must  have  been  made  uncomfortable 
by  the  ice-cold  polar  or  glacier  waters.  Heat  feeling  must  have 
been  a  very  early  sense,  and  connected  with  visceral  reflexes,  so 
that  the  sympathetic  nervous  system  would  be  more  involved^  in 
modifying  conditions  of  organs  through  heat  reflexes  than  the 
cerebro-spinal  nerves.  All  parts  of  the  body  may  appear  involved 
in  fever  recognition,  but  how  is  a  hot  point  on  the  surface  made 
known  ?    Is  it  through  the  vessels,  the  blood  or  the  nerves  ? 

The  Touch  Sense  is  the  most  general,  the  most  rudimentary 
and  the  earliest  to  appear  in  the  scale  of  life.  When  all  other 
special  sense  faculty  is  lost,  the  touch,  or  tactile,  sense  may  remain 
and  be  the  only  link  between  the  brain  and  the  outer  world  as  a 
means  of  education.  There  are  nerves  to  convey  the  sense  of 
touch,  pain  and  to  enable  us  to  feel  heat  and  cold.  From  the  fact 
that  these  sensations  are  so  very  relative,  cold  being  merely  the 
absence  of  heat  and  heat  being  the  absence  of  cold,  and  what  is 
cold  at  one  instant  may  be  hot  at  another,  and  our  appreciation  of 
either  heat  or  cold  being  so  dependent  upon  external  or  internal 
influences,  it  seems  surprising  that  one  set  of  nerves  would  not  be 
enough  to  carry  inward  both  sensations.  A  physicist  would  be 
likely  to  jump  to  the  conclusion  that  one  set  of  nerves  would  suf- 
fice, but  our  theories  often  are  jarred  by  newly  discovered  facts. 
The  surface  of  the  body  is  abundantly  supplied  with  little  bulbs 
which  are  concerned  in  receiving  contacts  to  send  nervous  im« 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  453 

pulses  inward  to  the  brain.  But  these  end  organs  are  unequally 
scattered  about  the  person,  for  in  places,  such  as  the  back,  a  pair 
of  carpenter's  compasses  gives  the  sensation  of  only  one  point 
pricking  the  skin,  when  two  points  may  be  doing  so  several  inches 
apart,  while  on  the  tip  of  the  tongue  or  end  of  the  fingers  these 
sharp  points  may  be  felt  as  two  separate  pricks,  even  though  a 
small  fraction  of  an  inch  apart.  It  is  the  same  with  the  heat,  cold 
and  pain  senses,  for  some  parts  of  the  body  are  acutely  sensitive 
to  such  feelings,  while  other  portions  are  dulled  to  them. 

Democritus  claimed  that  all  the  senses  were  modifications  of 
the  sense  of  touch,  and  modern  science  upholds  this  view,  as  it  ap- 
pears biologically  the  touch  sense  was  the  first  to  be  developed, 
and  the  other  senses  proceeded  from  it  by  evolutionary  refinement 
of  outer-end  organs. 

In  the  lowest  forms  of  life,  where  there  is  no  nervous  system, 
every  movement  of  the  animal  parts,  however  coarse  or  fine  these 
parts  or  movements  may  be,  practically  constitutes  sensation  in 
the  animal,  and  this  connection  between  mind  and  body,  the  men- 
tal and  physical  life,  exists  much  more  in  the  highest  animal  life 
than  is  sufficiently  recognized.  The  various  forces  of  nature 
which  may  affect  living  things,  as  well  as  things  which  do  not 
live,  may  be  arranged  in  serial  manner.  Visible  ripples  in  the 
water  up  to  the  great  waves  of  the  ocean,  with  every  sort  of  mo- 
tion greater  than  these,  include  mechanical  force  or  energy,  and 
ripples  or  movements  of  any  substance  down  to  thirty,  forty,  fifty, 
or  a  few  more  movements  per  second,  could  also  be  included 
among  mechanical  motions,  force  or  energy.  Now,  while  with 
the  ear  we  may  appreciate  forty  movements  per  second  and  forty 
thousand  movements  per  second,  with  the  touch  sense  impres- 
sions made  slowly,  one  to  forty  per  second,  distinct  and  separate 
feelings  are  caused,  but  with  more  rapid  impressions  there  is  a 
mere  sensation  of  roughness,  as  in  passing  the  hand  over  velvet 
or  the  fine  down  of  a  peach.  If  the  contacts  are  more  numerous 
than  1,400  per  second  the  sense  of  roughness  disappears  and  a 
smooth  sensation  is  felt. 

Pressure  may  be  felt  on  skin  not  supplied  with  nerves  and 
sound  vibrations  may  be  transferred  to  the  auditory  nerve  even 
after  the  auditory  organ  is  removed. 


454  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

To  some  degree  the  touch  sense  may  compensate  the  loss  of 
sight  in  the  bHnd,  and  hearing  may  also  do  so,  but  Galton  thinks 
this  is  greatly  overrated.  There  are  special  organs  in  the  regions 
of  the  body  most  sensitive  to  pressure,  but  their  structure  ren- 
ders it  probable  that  they  merely  favor  the  mechanical  transfer 
of  the  stimulus  to  the  nerve  endings.  Special  end  organs  for  hot, 
cold  and  pain  stimuli  have  not  been  found  at  all.  Space  percep- 
tions through  the  touch  sense  consist  in  those  of  pressure  or  re- 
sistance, and  those  of  motion  or  movement.  The  perception  of 
direction  is  by  localization  of  points  touched  and  by  discrimination 
with  experience  as  guide.  Tlie  tactile  hair  sense  of  man  is  sepa- 
rate from  the  general  touch  sense.  Considering  the  remarkable 
sensitiveness  of  some  plants  to  contacts,  the  fly-catching  carniv- 
orous plants,  and  other  seeming  analogies  between  the  animal  and 
plant  life,  an  added  significance  is  given  to  the  following  words 
of  Darwin,  with  which  he  closes  his  memorable  work :  "We  be- 
lieve that  there  is  no  structure  in  plants  more  wonderful,  as  far 
as  its  functions  are  concerned,  than  the  tip  of  the  radicle.  If  the 
tip  be  lightly  pressed,  or  burnt  or  cut,  it  transmits  an  influence  to 
the  upper  adjoining  part,  causing  it  to  bend  away  from  the  af- 
fected side ;  and,  what  is  more  surprising,  the  tip  can  distinguish 
between  a  slightly  harder  and  softer  object,  by  which  it  is  simul- 
taneously pressed  on  opposite  sides.  If,  however,  the  radicle  is 
pressed  by  a  similar  object  a  little  above  the  tip,  the  pressed  part 
does  not  transmit  any  influence  to  the  more  distant  parts,  but 
bends  abruptly  toward  the  object.  If  the  tip  perceives  the  air  to 
be  moister  on  one  side  than  on  the  other,  it  likewise  transmits 
an  influence  to  the  upper  adjoining  part,  which  bends  toward  the 
source  of  moisture.  When  the  tip  is  excited  by  light  *  'i^  =!= 
the  adjoining  part  bends  from  the  light;  but  when  excited  by 
gravitation,  the  same  part  bends  toward  the  center  of  gravity.  In 
almost  every  case  we  can  clearly  perceive  the  final  purpose  or 
advantage  of  the  several  movements.  Two,  or  perhaps  more,  of 
the  exciting  causes  often  act  simultaneously  on  the  tip,  and  the 
one  conquers  the  other,  no  doubt  in  accordance  with  its  import- 
ance for  the  life  of  the  plant.  The  course  pursued  by  the  radicle 
in  penetrating  the  ground  must  be  determined  by  the  tip;  hence 
it  has  acquired  such  diverse  kinds  of  sensitiveness.     It  is  hardly 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  455 

an  exaggeration  to  say.  that  the  tip  of  the  radicle  thus  endowed, 
and  having  the  power  of  directing  the  movements  of  the  adjoin- 
ing parts,  acts  Hke  the  brain  of  one  of  the  lower  animals ;  the  brain 
being  seated  within  the  anterior  end  of  the  body,  receiving  im- 
pressions from  the  sense  organs,  and  directing  the  several  move- 
ments.^*^ 

In  discussing  the  Feelings,  C.  L.  Herrick^^  suggests  that 
changes  in  blood  pressure  may  occur  which  now  produce  no  di- 
rect sensations,  but  which  operate  indirectly  on  the  reflexes  asso- 
ciated with  emotions.  That  is  that  instead  of  a  localizable  sensa- 
tion the  stimulus  finds  its  way  to  our  consciousness  in  a  form 
which  we  term  pleasure  or  pain,  anger  or  fear.  Even  the  repro- 
duction of  a  painful  event  may  cause  a  variety  of  delicate  and 
indescribable  thrills  with  waves  of  contraction  passing  through 
various  regions  of  the  trunk  and  limbs.  The .  impulse  to  hug, 
squeeze  and  press  objects  associated  with  tinglings  and  strong 
jaw  contraction  which  Prof.  Herrick  mentions  is  explicable  very 
likely  by  Darwin's  law  of  serviceable  associated  habit,  in  the  for- 
merly useful  clutching  and  carrying  off  movements  being  refined 
by  civilization.  The  early  localization  of  the  affections  in  the 
bowels,  he  says,  is  founded  on  good  physiological  observations. 
He  refers  to  Tuke's  remark  that  by  acting  chiefly  on  the  flexor 
muscles,  fear  causes  the  general  bending  or  curving  of  the  frame, 
as  the  hedgehog  does,  while  courage  contracts  the  extensors  and 
produces  expansion  and  height.  The  opposite  state  of  relaxation 
occurs  in  terror.  Calmness  is  marked  by  a  gentle  contraction  of 
the  muscles,  indicative  of  repose,  but  at  the  same  time  of  latent 

R.  Wagner  was  the  first  to  broach  the  supposition  that  the  pale  fibres 
in  the  Pacinian  bodies  and  in  the  electric  organs  were  sheaths  with  axis 
cylinders,  and  that  the  processes  which  pass  into  nerve  fibres  were  them- 
selves bare  axis  cylinders,  and,  moreover,  that  the  entire  granular  con- 
tents of  a  nerve  cell  are  nothing  but  an  axis  cylinder  enlarged  into  a  globu- 
lar form.    A.  Kolliker,  ed.  by  J.  DaCosta,  1854,  P-  355- 

Schiff  says  (same  page)  that  the  paths  in  the  spinal  cord  for  the  con- 
duction of  sense  impressions  of  touch  are  in  the  posterior  white  columns, 
while  the  tracts  for  the  conduction  of  painful  impressions -are  in  the  gray 
matter  of  the  cord. 

'*  Darwin,  Power  of  Movement  in  Plants. 

"Journal  of  Comparative  Neurology,  Sept.,  1892,  p.  113. 


456  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

power,  by  the  countenance  free  from  furrows,  but  not  relaxed 
into  weakness.  Anger  induces  more  or  less  rigidity  of  the  mus- 
cles generally. 

As  a  feeling  is  produced  in  an  organ  and  is  diffused  toward 
the  brain  and  cord,  as  in  the  case  of  erotism,  there  can  be  no  cerr- 
tres  in  the  brain  for  a  feeling  or  sentiment,  as  the  same  tracts  and 
consciousness  may  be  concerned  in  another  feeling  at  anothei 
time.  The  periphery  alone  differentiates  feeling,  and  the  end  or- 
gan is  the  only  centre.  The  kind  of  feeling,  its  degree,  rapidity, 
etc.,  that  is  characteristic  of  the  end  organ  is  felt  in  consciousness. 
There  are  no  centres  in  the  brain  for  certain  groups  of  feeling. 
For  example,  a  voluptuous  feeling  arises  in  the  genitals  and  mem- 
ory of  it  is  transmitted  to  the  brain  over  the  same  tracts  as  other 
sensations  and  feelings.  The  organ  is  the  seat  of  the  correspond- 
ing sense.  Decidedly  in  the  eel,  and  in  prior  and  subsequent 
forms,  this  erotic  instinct  modifies  action,  but  as  its  brain  influ- 
ence is  in  the  line  of  pursuit  and  motions  similar  to  other  prehen- 
sile acts  no  special  seat  in  the  cerebrum  can  be  found  for  it.  Bit- 
ings,  embrace,  etc.,  show  that  the  same  tracts  are  stimulated. 
Many  of  the  differentiated  feelings,  sentiments,  emotions,  etc., 
are  close  to  their  bases,  which  are  easily  recognized  when  circum- 
stances lop  off  the  superstructure.  But  the  obscuration  of  words 
leads  the  mind  away  from  fundamentals.  The  feelings  cannot  be 
freed  from  intellect,  while  sensation  and  perception  are  the  lowest 
forms  of  the  connection  of  feeling  and  intellect.  Where  action  is 
automatic  feeling  does  not  exist  as  in  the  case  of  visceral  move- 
ments. 

Sensation  may  be  graded  through  small  differences  all  the 
way  from  no  sensation  at  all  to  where  it  is  so  intense  as  to  cause 
pain  which,  if  continued,  may  destroy  the  nerve.  Two  persons 
may  be  equally  able  to  hear  the  same  faint  sound  and  be  pained 
by  the  same  loud  sound,  and  yet  differ  in  the  grades  of  hearing, 
according  to  low  or  high  organization.  An  artist  may  see  differ- 
ences of  tint  better  than  others,  but  cannot  therefore  see  in  the 
dark  or  stand  strong  sunshine  any  better  than  others.  Musicians 
may  not  hear  faint  sounds  nor  be  startled  by  loud  ones.  A  me- 
chanic with  rough  hands  may  have  developed  a  special  touch 
ability  useful  to  his  work.     Idiots  have  blunt  touch  sense.     Men 


THE    SENSES    AND    EEEEINGS.  457 

have  more  delicate  powers  of  discrimination  than  women,  accord- 
ing to  Galton.^^ 

As  hunger  is  a  primitive  sense  and  a  form  of  pain  all  pain 
may  be  considered  as  expressing  hunger,  but  if  appeased  it  means 
pleasure.  Fear  in  one  of  its  primary  states  is  the  fear  of  hunger, 
whence  other  fears  are  derived  from  association.  Corribativeness 
and  destructiveness  are  associated  with  hunger  appeasing.  Curi- 
osity is  based  upon  a  search  for  food  and  the  higher  curiosity 
such  as  is  shown  in  a  desire  for  knowledge  is  an  expression  of  the 
need  of  exercise  of  faculties  and  organs  originally  devoted  to 
more  primary  purposes.  Play  is  a  need  of  exercise  of  the  senses. 
So,  in  the  evolution  of  the  brain,  hunger  appeasing  senses  and 
emotions  would  have  the  first  place.  We  see  the  large  number 
and  great  size  of  the  organs  necessary  to  provide  for  appetite, 
and  the  nervous  system  that  relates  these  organs  together  and  the 
brain  on  top  of  all  is,  in  the  main,  devoted  to  eating  and  to  enable 
the  animal  to  get  food  to  eat.  These  facts  are  completely  lost 
sight  of  by  the  old  school  metaphysician,  although  they  are  so 
apparent  as  to  merely  need  mention.  Therefore,  the  centres  of 
the  brain  are  largely  related  to  the  purely  selfish,  though  neces- 
sary, matter  of  eating  and  procuring  food.  This  gives  us  a  start- 
ing point  in  considering  the  functions  of  the  brain  and  how  they 
have  evolved. 

Emotions  have  no  centres,  as  the  feelings  are  general,  but 
there  can  be  centres  for  motion,  and  special  senses  and  many  in- 
tellectual functions  are  merely  hunger  appeasing  abilities  in  their 
last  analysis. 

Consciousness  is  requisite  in  pain  appreciation  as  well  as  any 
kind  of  feeling.  The  suppression  or  blunting  of  consciousness 
notoriously  suppresses  or  blunts  pain.  The  cognizance  of  pain 
being  a  cerebral  process  involving  consciousness,  cutting  off  the 
route  to  the  brain  by  which  pain  is  conveyed  to  consciousness  dis- 
poses of  the  pain,  but  not  of  the  cause  originating  it.  Too  many 
pain  alleviators  are  mere  deadeners  of  sensation.  The  inebriate 
"'drives  dull  care  away"  with  his  dram,  but  awakes  to  a  realization 
of  having  intensified  his  troubles  by  the  means  adopted  to  escape 

'^  Inquiries  into  Human  Faculty. 


45S  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

them.  Schopenhauer  holds  that  pains  are  positive  and  pleasures 
are  negative  experiences ;  that  pleasures  are  due  to  the  absence  of 
pain  and  the  intensity  of  one  is  often  in  proportion  to  the  other 
feeling  that  preceded.  Susceptibility  to  painful  impressions  in- 
creases with  development  of  the  nervous  system  in  the  ascending 
scale  of  life  from  lower  animals  to  man  and  in  the  ratio  of  intel- 
lectual growth,  and  enjoyments  are  correspondingly  multiplied 
and  intensified.  The  pains  and  pleasures  of  the  intellect  are  both 
quantitatively  greater  with  its  development. 

The  major  anesthetics  act  upon  pain  by  extinguishing  con- 
sciousness in  general,  other  chemicals  arrest  the  pain  consciousness 
alone,  and  in  rare  cases  ether  and  chloroform  have  unexpectedly 
allowed  intelligence  to  be  preserved  during  the  painlessness  in- 
duced by  them,  while  intermediate  states  between  total  and  partial 
abolition  of  consciousness  occur  from  insufficient  anesthesia,  to 
that  which  is  called  the  surgical  degree.  Shock  to  the  nervous 
system  is  more  likely  in  the  former  case,  and  it  sounds  strange 
to  say  that,  other  things  equal,  death  during  an  operation  is  more 
likely  to  occur  from  imperfect  than  from  full  anesthesia. 

The  philosophic  claims  of  pleasure  being  not  only  antithetical 
to  pain  but  due  to  pain  absence,  finds  justification  in  the  universal 
prevalence^  of  care,  which  is  essentially  a  painful  state,  and  the 
fools'  paradise  to  which  the  drunkard  is  conveyed  by  his  anesthetic 
alcohol.  Further,  in  paretic  dementia  there  are  both  physical  and 
mental  anesthesia ;  the  tactile  sense  impairment,  akin  to  what  is 
found  in  locomotor  ataxia,  is  accompanied  by  the  loss  of  care, 
indifference  to  what  would  otherwise  cause  grief,  or  other  de- 
grees of  mental  pain.  The  consequence  is  the  feeling  of  well 
being,  bienfaisance,  and  upon  this  is  erected  the  "delusion  of 
grandeur"  which  takes  the  direction  of  assertions  of  great  wealth, 
strength,  or  powerfulness  in  some  form,  according  to  the  ideals 
usual  to  individuals  of  different  classes.  So  paretic  dementia  and 
the  complacent  megalomania  stage  of  paranoia  may  be  put  in  the 
category  of  pathologic  mental  anesthesias,  all  the  more  properly 
as  both  disorders  indicate  impending  total  destruction  of  the  or- 
gan of  the  mind.  Many  bodily  functions,  such  as  digestion, 
assimilation,  etc.,  are  unfelt,  conveying  nothing  of  their  workings 
to  consciousness  until  some  fault  in  their  process  renders  them 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  459 

apparent ;  induces  discomfort,  anxiety,  or  pain.  Interference  with 
customary  nerve  action  may ;  under  certain  conditions,  be  the  basis 
of  painful  sensations.  In  all  life  relations  that  which  occasions 
the  least  effort  impresses  consciousness  least.  Changes  from 
usual  experiences  may  entail  effort,  greater  expenditure,  more 
labored  heart  and  blood  vessel  impulses;  more  heat  is  evolved, 
tissues  are  consumed  and  require  more  repair  than  usual.  Mosso 
shows  that  thought  is  no  exception  to  the  rule,  for  blood  pres- 
sure and  temperature  are  raised  in  this  kind  of  brain  activity,  and 
the  wear  and  tear  of  cerebral  structures  in  worry,  grief,  anxiety, 
can  be  as  actual  as  from  some  mechanical  destruction  such  as  a 
tumor  or  direct  injury  could  induce.  Effort  of  any  kind  has  in 
it  the  constant  menace  of  pain,  and  relaxation  the  promise  of  re- 
lease therefrom,  though  inactivity  sometimes  may  also  become 
painful  if  maintained  by  effort.  Life  itself  is  activity,  whether  in 
rest  or  in  labor.  Molecular  or  mass  motion  must  proceed  in  vary- 
ing degrees,  asleep  or  awake,  toiling  or  recuperating.  And  the 
law  of  relativity  complicates  considerations  of  activity  and  inac- 
tivity by  making  effort  and  rest  impossible  to  classify  under  all 
conditions.  What  would  be  labor  to  one  person  is  not  such  to  an- 
other. Ease  to  one  individual  would  be  torture  to  another,  and 
accompanying  circumstances  may  convert  what  would  be  pleasure 
at  one  time  into  pain  at  another.  Pain  also  is  relative,  for  a  cer- 
tain nervous  molecular  activity  may  be  over-stimulation  in  one 
person  and  normal  in  another.  For  the  proper  maintenance  of 
nerve  function  there  must  be  continuity  of  the  conducting  organ, 
a  normal  degree  of  pressure  thereupon  not  to  be  exceeded ;  heat 
above  a  certain  level  and  within  definite  limits ;  a  suitable  supply 
of  nutritive  material  usually  secured  from  the  circulation,  and 
that  it  should  be  suitable  refers  to  both  quality  and  quantity. 
Pain  may  result  from  interrupted  continuity,  from  irritation  or 
pressure  upon  nerves  or  their  centres,  from  heat  or  cold  extremes 
and  from  defective  nutrition,  provided  that  the  sensory  portion  of 
the  nervous  system  is  not  disabled  from  conveying  intelligence  of 
such  changes  to  consciousness.  Great  organic  destruction  may 
proceed  unrecognized  as  such  until  the  sensory  nervous  distribu- 
tion is  in  some  way  apprised ;  so  while  pain  may  in  a  general  way 
serve  to  warn  of  danger,  it  may  fail  to  do  so.  or  prove  unreliable 


460  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

■  in  making  a  great  disturbance  over  an  imperfect  tooth  while  fail- 
ing to  inform  the  drunkard  of  the  slow  destruction  of  his  liver 
or  brain.  History  also  abounds  in  instances  of  universal  hubbub 
over  trifles  and  apathy  concerning  matters  of  the  greatest  impor- 
tance. Hunger  is  a  form  of  pain  which  disappears  in  the  extrem- 
ity of  starvation.  One  may  freeze  unawares  but  suffer  acutely 
during  warmth  restoration.  Local  blood  quantity  may  increase 
or  decrease  emotional,  intellectual  or  sensory  faculties.  Nerve 
stimulants  raise  the  spirits  and  make  sensations  keener.  Seda- 
tives diminish  mental  pain  as  they  do  physical.  Only  broad  gen- 
eralizations are  practicable  in  determining  what  would  be  pleasur- 
able or  painful,  for  so  many  modifying  factors  complicate  both 
extremes  of  these  sensations  that  experiences  when  repeated  may 
fail  to  act  as  before,  or  pain  may  become  pleasure  or  pleasure  pain. 
And  what  would  afford  pleasure  to  one  person  may  be  annoying 
to  others.  The  color  blind  and  tone  deaf  persons  are  merely  bored 
by  what  others  enjoy.  Dean  Stanley  actually  suffered  from  lis- 
tening to  music,  yet  Jennie  Lind  once  told  Max  Miiller  he  paid 
her  the  highest  compliment  she  had  ever  received.  Stanley  was 
very  fond  of  Jennie  Lind,  but  when  she  staid  at  his  father's  pal- 
ace at  Norwich  he  always  left  the  room  when  she  sang.  One 
evening  Jenny  Lind  had  been  singing  Handel's  "I  Know  That 
My  Redeemer  Liveth."  Stanley,  as  usual  left  the  room,  but  he 
came  back  after  the  music  was  over  and  came  shyly  up  to  Jenny 
Lind.  "You  know,"  he  said,  "I  dislike  music ;  I  don't  know  what 
people  mean  by  admiring  it.  I  am  very  stupid,  tone  deaf,  as 
others  are  color  blind.  But,"  he  said  with  some  warmth,  "to- 
night when  from  a  distance  I  heard  you  singing  that  song  I  had 
and  inkling  of  what  some  people  mean  by  music.  Something 
came  over  me  which  I  had  never  felt  before,  or  yes,  I  had  felt  it 
once  before  in  my  Hfe."  Jenny  Lind  was  all  attention.  "Some 
years  ago,"  he  continued,  "I  was  at  Vienna  and  one  evening  there 
was  a  tattoo  before  the  place  performed  by  400  drummers.  I 
felt  shaken,  and  to-night,  while  listening  to  your  singing,  the 
same  feeling  came  over  me ;  I  felt  deeply  moved."  "Dear  man," 
she  added,  "I  know  he  meant  it,  and  a  more  honest  compliment  I 
never  received  in  my  life."  What  savages  consider  musical  the 
civilized  could  not  tolerate,  and  the  untrained  ear  is  wearied  by 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  46 1 

classical  music  as  is  the  untrained  mind  by  discourse  beyond  or- 
dinary understanding.  For  this  reason,  as  Herbert  Spencer 
claims,  wisdom  always  has  appeared  and  always  will  appear  to  be 
folly  to  the  ignorant.  The  special  sense  nerves  have  been  ex- 
cluded by  some  physiologists  from  among  conveyors  of  pain,  but 
blinding  light,  disagreeable  sounds,  odors  and  tastes  are  analo- 
gous to  tactile  pains,  and  are  induced  by  over-stimulation  or  other 
comparable  interruption  to  the  customary  nerve  workings.  As 
frequently  more  than  a  single  factor  enters  into  the  creation  of 
pain  and  its  exacerbations,  the  withdrawal  of  one  of  these  ele- 
ments may  modify  or  even  relieve  the  suffering.  For  example  it 
is  told  that  a  professor  lectured  through  his  hour  unconscious  of 
a  cinder  in  his  eye  which  made  itself  felt  immediately  afterward. 
Referring  to  the  use  of  derivation  such  as  blisters,  hot  foot  baths, 
cathartics,  etc.,  in  relieving  pain  by  reducing  circulation  in  the 
painful  part,  enables  the  relief  obtained  by  the  professor  to  be 
explained  as  blood  supply  withheld  from  the  point  of  irritation 
while  the  blood  was  contributing  to  brain  functions. 

In  paretic  dementia  and  megalomania  the  false  happiness  en- 
gendered by  the  brain  destruction,  and  the  disappearance  of  hun- 
ger when  dissolution  is  begun,  may  serve  to  explain  the  spes 
phthisica,  or  hopefulness  of  consumption,  through  blunted  pul- 
monary afferent  impressions.  Thus  the  reverse  of  pain  accom- 
panies anesthesia,  or  absence  of  sensation,  and  it  is  the  thought- 
less who  are  gayest  and  freest  from  care. 

Lucretius,  Seneca  and  Homer  allude  to  what  modern  psychol- 
ogists call  the  luxury  of  grief  (Spencer),  pleasure  in  pain 
(Ribot),  and  the  pleasure  of  pain  (Boullier).  There  are  pleas- 
ures derived  in  some  morbid  conditions  from  physical  and  others 
from  moral  pain.  Jerome  Cardan  wrote  that  he  could  not  endure 
existence  without  pain  and  he  resorted  to  self-torture  to  secure 
enjoyment.  Krafft-Ebing  discusses  such  flagellants  as  a  recog- 
nized type  of  sexual  perverts.  The  melancholy  of  lovers  (spoken 
of  by  an  Irishman  as  "sweet  pain"),  that  of  poets  and  artists  is 
included  in  pleasureable  pains.  Spencer  ventures  the  explanation 
that  the  feeling  is  one  of  pleasure  in  deserving  more  than  has 
been  received. 

Depression  of  vital  functions  is  involved  in  ordinary  pain. 


462  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Melancholia  is  a  "psychical  neuralgia,"  according  to  Krafift- 
Ebing.  The  coupling  of  pleasure  with  what  is  beneficial  and  pain 
with  what  is  detrimental,  originated  with  Aristotle,  but  it  is  far 
from  being  a  universal  rule,  for  pain  may  be  far  more  useful  as  a 
life-conserver  than  pleasure,  and  the  latter  may  indicate  dissolu- 
tion, while  both  may  be  associated  in  apparently  outrageous  fash- 
ion in  pathologic  instances.  Susceptibility  to  pain  may  persist 
in  spite  of  anesthesia,  though  analgesia  is  a  common  accompani- 
tnent  of  loss  of  sensation.  In  locomotor  ataxia  anesthesia  and  the 
terrible  shooting  pains  co-exist.  Hyperalgesia  can  be  considered 
as  an  aggravated  hyperesthesia  The  zone  of  irritability  parallel 
to  that  of  anesthesia  on  the  chest  of  one  with  spinal  cord  disease, 
(Can  be  explained  by  the  hyperesthesia  being  due  to  central  nerve 
root  irritability  as  a  forerunner  of  the  more  serious  cause  of  the 
associated  loss  of  sensation  in  the  adjacent  nerve  distribution.  If 
this  irritability  involved  the  blood  supply  reflex  of  the  spinal  cord 
gray  matter,  pain  is  intensified  and  is  induced  by  ordinary  stimu- 
lation of  the  implicated  nerves.  In  ^'Comparative  Physiology  and 
Psychology"  (1883),  I  detailed  reasons  for  the  existence  of  what 
could  be  called  a  ^'nutrient  reflex,"  whereby  blood  was  instantly 
impelled  to  localities  in  the  body  that  had  undergone  waste 
through  action,  and  were  hence  in  need  of  repair.  The  mechan- 
ism consisted  in  an  intimate  association  of  the  vaso-motor  nerves 
with  the  cerebro-spinal  nervous  system  as  seen  in  the  rami  com- 
tnunicantes  running  from  the  spinal  to  the  sympathetic  system  of 
nerves  and  their  ganglia.  It  is  only  by  introducing  nutrient  re- 
flexes into  consideration  of  all  the  higher  vital  processes  that 
they  can  be  even  approximately  understood.  The  regulation  of 
the  caliber  of  blood  vessels,  the  swiftness  of  the  current  of  blood 
and  the  amount  supplied  to  parts  in  proportion  to  their  needs  in 
such  parts,  by  a  harmonious  working  of  the  vaso-motor  nervous 
system  with  the  cerebral  and  spinal,  when  carefully  considered, 
clear  up  many  an  obscure  point  in  nerve  and  brain  physiology  and 
consequently  in  psychology.  Failure  of  this  relationship  will  also 
account  for  pathologic  phenomena  explicable  in  no  other  way. 
Thus  in  hysteria,  instead  of  proper  vascular  workings,  blood  is 
withheld  from  cerebral  centers,  giving  rise  to  aphonia,  deafness, 
blindness,  etc.,  and  when  impelled  to  inappropriate  parts  an  inver- 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  463 

sion  of  the  emotional  exhibitions  may  result  in  pleasant  impres- 
sions starting  the  weeping  mechanism,  and  laughter  following 
upon  unpleasant  impressions.  Cramped  vascular  and  other  renal 
channels  sufficiently  account  for  hysteric  urinary  suppression,  and 
relaxation  of  these  parts  induces  the  copious  urina  spastica,  or 
vast  quantities  of  limpid  urine,  passed  after  a  hysteric  attack. 
Ordinary  toothache  induced  by  alveolar  abscess  is  lessened  by 
whatever  draws  blood  from  the  painful  part  and  is  increased  by 
hypermeia.  The  irritation  of  the  carious  tooth  starts  the  pain, 
but  the  battle  of  the  phagocytes  and  micro-organisms  induces  an 
increased  blood  accumulation,  which  by  mere  pressure  may  in- 
tensify the  agony.  Relief  through  evacuation  of  the  abscess  points 
to  the  blood  pressure  as  the  aggravator  of  the  pain.  When  pain  is 
relieved  by  a  mental  impression  it  can  best  be  accounted  for 
through  derivation.  Some  other  portion  of  the  cerebral  or  other 
organ  drains  away  the  overplus  blood,  with  corresponding  relief. 
Some  headaches  dependent  mainly,  though  secondarily,  upon  too 
much  blood,  or  erratic  blood  distribution  in  the  brain  meninges, 
can  be  relieved  by  whatever  will  determine  blood  elsewhere, 
whether  by  full  or  partial  hot  bath,  a  mustard  plaster,  a  changed 
current  of  thought,  or  a  mental  impression.  Conversely  an 
anemic  headache  may  disappear  upon  lying  down  or  by  heart 
stimulation.  That  the  circulation  participates  in  suffering  either 
as  a  cause  or  consequence  is  readily  observable.  Congestion  may 
induce  tactile  pain,  offensive  odors,  ringing  in  the  ears,  flashes  of 
light  or  perverted  taste,  according  to  the  nerve  distribution  af- 
fected ;  the  extreme  congestion  can  obtund  or  even  cut  off  special 
sense  apprciation,  inducing  anesthesia,  deafness,  blindness,  inabil- 
ity to  smell  or  taste,  through  pressure,  and  the  opposite  extreme 
of  bloodlessness  can  set  up  identical  defects.  The  old  saying  that 
''pain  is  the  cry  of  the  nerve  for  purer  blood,"  is  in  a  restricted 
sense  true.  Impure  blood  may  induce  pain  through  acting  as  a 
foreign  substance  and  through  reducing  the  quantity  of  blood 
proper.  Pain  may  be  the  cry  for  less  blood  also.  Headache  from 
bad  air  is  a  toxemia,  ordinarily  relieved  by  fresh  air.  The  insuf- 
ficient oxygenation  renders  this  qualitative  a  quantitative  condi- 
tion. Headaches  caused  by  tumors,  especially  by  grinding  luetic 
headache,  are  through  meningeal  nerve  pressure  and  irritation. 


464  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Similarly  meningitis  and  injuries  to  the  head  that  involve  the 
brain  and  its  covering,  when  inflammatory  conditions  follow,  de- 
pend upon  the  vascular  troubles  associated  with  such  inflamma- 
tions. Reducing  the  blood  supply  to  the  head  modifies  the  pain 
and  destructive  processes.  Irritation  of  ordinary  sensory  nerves 
suffices  to  cause  pain,  as  when  an  amputation  stump  cicatrix  in- 
cludes a  nerve  and  neuromatous  growths  are  formed.  That  the 
circulation  contributes  to  the  pain  is  evident  through  the  desire 
to  elevate  the  stump  and  by  gravitating  the  blood  therefrom  allay 
the  suffering.  Normal  irritation  of  nerves  produces  the;  feeling 
of  general  comfort,  free  breathing,  and  tactile  impressions  gener- 
ally. Hunger,  thirst,  malaise,  horror,  fatigue  are  due  to  nerve 
terminal  irritation.  Mechanical,  chemic,  thermal  and  electric 
stimulation  may  cause  pain  if  transcending  certain  limits,  or  if 
intense  enough  may  destroy  sensation  altogether,  and  beyond  this 
the  anesthesia  dolorosa  may  appear.  Pains  are  not  always  defin- 
itely located,  through  irradiation,  or  may  be  referred  to  the  wrong 
source  of  origin,  as  when  amputation  pains  are  felt  to  be  in  the 
lost  member.  Varieties  of  pains  are  in  proportion  to  the  intens- 
ity of  stimulus,  and  massiveness  regards  the  number  of  nerves 
involved.  Most  of  the  differences  described  by  the  words  pierc- 
ing, shooting,  cutting,  boring,  burning,  pressing,  gnawing  and 
acute,  are  due  to  the  intermittent  or  continuous  molecular  changes 
in  nerves  or  their  centers,  but  the  throbbing  and  dull  pains  usually 
owe  their  peculiarities  to  arterial  or  passive  congestion.  The 
headache  known  as  angio-paralytic  has  been  often  relieved  by 
pressure  upon  the  carotid  supplying  the  aching  part  and  the 
angio-spastic  kind  should  be  treated  by  means  calculated  to  re- 
lieve spasm,  such  as  amyl  nitrite  inhalations.  In  the  one  case 
there  is  the  hyperemic  throbbing  arterial  impulse,  and  in  the 
other  intense  constriction  of  vessels  inducing  localized  anemic 
pains.  In  inflammatory  affections  of  the  skin  hyperelgesia  may 
be  so  extreme  that  a  breath  of  air  or  a  light  touch  produces  pain. 
The  blood  superabundance  in  the  nerve  terminals  here  is  plainl> 
the  cause.  The  disordered  sensations  called  paresthesise  includ- 
ing chills  and  burnings,  creeping,  itching,  formication,  are  re- 
lated to  pains,  and  may  become  so  intense  as  ot  become  such. 
Causalgia  and  Erythromelalgia  are- described  by  S.  Weir  Mitchell 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  465 

as  burning  sensations  and  reddenings  due  to  central  nerve  irri- 
tations. Neuralgias,  with  shooting  pains  transmitted  the  length 
of  the  nerve  affected,  primarily  or  secondarily  involve  blood  dis- 
tribution, and  inflammation  of  nerve  roots  frequently  give  rise  to 
neuralgias.  The  inflammation  may  not  be  the  cause  of  the  orig- 
inal disturbance,  but  even  though  produced  by  the  same  irrita- 
tion that  induced  the  neuralgia  it  is  an  aggravating  factor,  and 
when  this  inflammation  is  controllable  a  step  toward  possible  cure 
is  taken.  The  structural  commotion  recognized  as  pain  can  only 
be  maintained  by  blood  presence,  as  nutrition  is  necessary  for  pro- 
longation of  any  vital  phenomenon.  When  the  vascularity  of  a 
point  of  irritation,  such  as  the  amputation  end  of  a  nerve,  is  re- 
lieved of  blood  supply  by  gravitation  or  pressure  the  pain  is  les- 
sened. Anesthesia  often  accompanies  bloodless  peripheral  states 
and  the  numbness  of  freezing  depends  upon  the  constriction  of 
blood  vessels  and  other  circulatory  reduction  in  the  frozen  part 
which  visibly  whitens  through  being  deprived  of  blood. 

Inflammation  of  a  spinal  nerve  root  or  in  the  sensory  neu- 
roglia of  the  spinal  cord  causes  the  lightning  pains  of  neuralgias, 
ataxia  and  sciatica.  Relief  of  the  inflammation  necessitates  more 
than  mere  temporary  alleviation  of  the  pain,  for  the  primary 
cause  of  the  irritation  that  induced  the  inflammation  must  be 
reached,  and  a  destructive  process  in  the  nerve  centres  from 
chemic  changes  is  too  often  beyond  control.  Among  painful 
states  associated  with  too  much  engorgement  of  nerves  or  their 
centres  are  all  the  hyperemic,  congested  or  inflammatory  cerebro- 
spinal disorders,  such  as  some  headaches,  toothaches,  neuralgias, 
ataxic  pains,  overheating,  hyperalgesias  and  hyperesthesias.  The 
opposite  condition  of  relative  bloodlessness  occurs  in  cold,  hunger, 
thirst,  fatigue,  pressure,  anemic  headaches  and  other  painful 
states  depending  upon  reduced  blood  volume.  Blood  poisoning 
by  alcohol,  septic  matter,  gases,  etc.,  while  qualitatively  altering 
the  blood  for  the  worse,  reduces  the  quantity  of  pure  blood  to  parts 
and  act  as  anemic  factors,  while  the  foreign  substances  "irritate" 
the  nerve  centres.  Uric  acid  crystals  mechanically  cause  pain  in 
the  kidney  tubules,  ureters  and  bladder,  and  may  reasonably  be 
regarded  as  sensory  disturbers  elsewhere.  Sodium  urate  depos- 
its in  the   joints  exert  painful  pressure.     In  all  these   phases  of 


466  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

suffering  we  observe  an  irritated  part  of  the  nervovis  system, 
bloodlessness  or  engorgement,  associated  with  the  pain,  either  as 
cause,  effect  or  added  factor.  A  toxic  substance  circulating  in 
the  blood,  whether  introduced  from  without  or  manufactured  in 
the  body,  if  denied  proper  elimination,  as  often  takes  place  with 
uric-acidemia  or  other  auto-intoxication,  may  irritate  the  vascular 
nervous  control  so  as  to  produce  contracted  arterioles  with  in- 
creased arterial  tension,  a  spastic  condition  observable  in  migraine 
and  to  an  extreme  in  the  frightful  raptus  melancholicus.  In  these 
disorders,  irritation  primarily  and  relative  anemia  secondarily, 
are  at  the  foundation  of  the  suffering,  while  as  a  consequence 
engorgement  of  other  organs  or  parts  of  organs  complicates  and 
adds  pressure,  or  congestive  pains.  Over-stimulation  of  nerves 
often  produces  over-stimulation  of  the  circulation  or  even  its 
practical  paralysis,  with  localized  hyperemia  and  resulting  pain. 
In  short  all  painful  states  may  include  the  conditions  of  irritation, 
too  much  or  too  little  nutrition,  separately  or  combined,  in  vari- 
ous ways.  These  pain  factors  may  be  symbolically  represented  by 
the  initials  of  irritation,  hyperemia,  anemia,  to  graphically  illus- 
trate pain,  however  induced :  Uric  acid  headache :  I.  A. ;  the 
irritation  causing  the  anemia.  Chlorosis  headache :  A.  I. ;  the 
anemia  causing  the  irritation.  Cerebral  congestion :  H.  I. ;  the 
congestion  causing  the  irritation.  Over-stimulation  :  I.  H. ;  the 
irritation  causing  the  hyperemia.  These  three  conditions  may  be 
combined  simultaneously  or  successively  to  produce  very  many 
apparently  discordant  pathologic  states.  Anemia  in  one  part, 
however  induced,  may  result  in  congestion  in  an  adjacent  part, 
and  the  pressure  hyperemia  may  cut  off  nutrition  from  surround- 
ing points  so  that  both  hyperemia  and  anemia  may  occur  in 
closely  related  parts,  each  condition  adding  its  special  influence 
to  the  total  pain ;  so  the  localized  pain  may  have  the  formula  I.  A. ; 
I.  H. ;  I.  H.  A.  within  a  narrow  area,  or  either  H.  or  A.  may 
cause  I.,  and,  further,  the  combination  I.  H.  A.  may  set  up  inten- 
sified irritation ;  the  withdrawal  of  one  factor  serving  to  lower 
the  pain  intensity  and  paving  the  way  to  removal  of  the  entire 
pain.  Let  I.  be  induced  by  an  exposed  nerve,  H.  follows  with 
maybe  A.  in  contiguous  parts  by  pressure  of  blood;  now  while 
the  removal  of  H.  by  blood  evacuation  may  reduce  the  aggravat- 
ing influence  of  blood  pressure,  which  acts  irritativelv,  the  most 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  467 

sensible  thing  to  do  is  to  get  at  and  remove  the  primary  cause  of 
the  pain  by  protecting  the  nerve  from  exposure  which  sets  up  the 
hyperemia.  If  an  abscess  results  from  the  phagocytic  battle  the 
septic  advance  adds  further  irritation,  which  must  be  disposed 
of  in  attempts  to  remove  all  causes  of  pain.  A  general  blood 
condition  may  favor  the  production  of  pain  by  having  within  it 
the  elements  of  disturbance  ready  to  centralize  upon  a  weak  point. 
Analogous  sociologic  states  exist.  Peter  the  Hermit  and  Walter 
the  Penniless  were  foci  of  irritation  in  the  eleventh  century,  lead- 
ing up  to  the  crusades  in  which  two  million  Europeans  were  slain 
in  two  centuries.  This  blood  letting  finally  carried  off  the  dis- 
turbers and  the  disturbed,  and,  therapeutically,  venesection  has 
for  ages  been  resorted  to  in  pain  relief,  though  derivation  or  the 
transfer  of  the  disturbed  circulation  is  nowadays  preferred.  A  point 
of  irritation  may  be  starved  out  by  keeping  nourishment  reduced, 
it  may  be  evacuated  at  the  expense  of  the  blood,  or  it  may  be  held 
in  check  by  removal  of  the  elements  that  nourish  its  fury,  or,  best 
of  all,  the  focus  sometimes  may  be  directly  destroyed  by  medical 
or  surgical  means.  Far  too  often  this  latter  proc'ess  is  impossible 
through  inability  to  determine  at  the  proper  time  just  where  or 
what  the  primary  disturbing  influences  may  be,  or  even  if  deter- 
mined there  is  in  most  cases  inability  to  get  at  and  remove  the 
origin  of  the  pain.  But  the  safest  rule  to  adopt  is  to  attempt  to  do 
so  if  within  possibility,  and  where  relief  of  pain  is  imperative  with 
no  practical  means  of  removing  ^he  cause  only  such  agents  should 
be  resorted  to  that  do  not  entail  other  and  often  greater  disadvan- 
tages to  the  economy,  sooner  or  later.  Only  such  portions  of  the 
body  as  are  supplied  with  sensory  nerves  relate  consciousness  to 
pain.  Irritation  of  unsupplied  parts  may  advance  to  various 
forms  of  destruction  and  until  the  sensory  filaments  are  second- 
arily involved  by  extension,  or  through  accompanying  circulatory 
alterations,  the  warning  which  pain  is  supposed  to  afford  is  ab- 
sent. Several  of  the  recently  discovered  synthetic  compounds 
combine  antipyretic  with  analgesic  properties  in  different  de- 
grees. Acetanilid,  formerly  known  as  antifebrin,  has  been  too 
recklessly  used.  It  depresses  the  heart  dangerously  and  requires 
careful  watch  of  its  physiological  effects.  "Antikamnia"^^  has 
^^  Helbing,  Modern  Materia  Medica,  p.  3. 


468  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

been  found  to  contain  acetanilid,  sodium  bicarbonate,  caffein  and 
tartaric  acid.  In  many  such  advertised  preparations  the  possi- 
ble introduction  of  acetanilid  should  be  regarded.  Even  external 
application  of  acetanilid,  as  has  been  suggested  for  antiseptic  pur- 
poses, is  dangerous.  Pseudo-scientific  compounds,  mainly  with 
acetanilid  mechanically  mixed  with  other  substances,  can  be 
avoided  by  learning  the  status  of  their  originators,  manufacturers 
and  clinical  reporters.  Antipyrin  is  incompatible  with  too  many 
materials  to  enable  its  administration  in  combination  with  or- 
dinary remedies.  Cesari's  claim  that  it  thickens  and  condenses 
the  blood  without  coagulating  it  may  account  for  its  hemostatic 
properties  and  should  be  regarded  in  a  study  of  its  anti-neural- 
gic, antipyretic  and  other  influences.  Methyl  chlorid  as  a  spray 
produces  local  anesthesia  through  freezing  the  part  to  which  it  is 
applied.  The  visible  whitening  of  the  surface  that  occurs  during 
its  application  indicates  that  bloodlessness  is  the  cause  of  the 
sensory  arrest.  Paraldehvde  is  an  unreliable  sedative  or  hypnotic. 
Phenacetin  or  j^henocoll  have  been  successfully  established  as 
sedatives  and  are  far  safer  than  acetanilid  or  antipyrin.  The  sali- 
cylates and  salol  possess  indirect  slight  analgesic  properties,  due 
to  their  antiseptic  and  anti-rheumatic  tendencies,  and  dilute  car- 
bolic acid  blanches  animal  surfaces  and  produces  local  anesthe- 
sia. Cocain  hydrochlorate  likewise  reduces  blood  circulation  at 
the  point  of  local  anesthesia.  Its  fascinating  temporary  euphoria 
and  later  excitation  of  nerve  centers  are  worthy  of  study  among 
psychologic  effects  of  drugs.  Opium  and  its  congeners  are  re- 
sponsible for  legions  of  debauched  habitues,  most  of  whom  date 
their  addiction  from  incautious  prescribing.  The  benumbing  in- 
fluence of  alcohol  and  opium  upon  the  nervous  system  generally 
account  for  their  exhilarant  influence,  on  the  principle  of  mental 
anesthesia  inducing  relative  exaltation ;  the  relief  from  care,  con- 
cern and  painful  memories  being  subjectively  interpreted  as  hap- 
piness. The  debased  sensory  apparatus  of  the  paretic  dement 
causes  him  to  insanely  ascribe  his  buoyancy  and  general  good 
feeling  to  greatness  or  good  fortune  realized.  Drugs  that  depress 
the  motor  apparatus  mainly,  such  as  conium  maculatum,  do  not 
exalt  the  sensory  field,  rather  the  reverse,  but  many  degrees  of 
association  between  anesthesia,  analgesia  and  exhilaration  are  ob- 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  469 

servable  in  other  neurotic  medicines.  Opium  primarily  relieves 
pain,  raises  the  spirits,  then  stupefies.  Alcohol  anesthetizes,  ex- 
alts and  ends  in  stupor.  Chloral  may  benumb  the  nervous  system, 
mildly  exalt,  then  stupefy.  Chloralamid,  a  much  safer  article,  is 
mildly  sedative,  causes  hypnosis,  and  the  day  following  large 
doses  a  feeling  of  exhilaration  is  reported.  Chloroform  and  ether 
€xcite,  and  finally  obtund  consciousness.  Oxygen  gas  exhilarates. 
Nitrous  oxide  gas  first  exhilarates,  and  then  affects  conscious- 
ness. The  bromides  depress  the  circulation,  are  mildly  analgesic, 
and  in  over-doses  stupefy.  Ergot  by  constringing  overloaded 
blood  vessels  may  secondarily  act  as  an  analgesic. 

It  has  occurred  to  me  that  the  physiologic  chemistry  of  ma- 
teria medica  could  be  appreciably  advanced  by  tabulating  the 
effect  of  graded  doses,  particularly  of  the  recent  cynthetic  com- 
pounds, as  to  when  the  sedative,  antipyretic,  antiseptic  and  hyp- 
notic effects,  if  any,  ensued,  juxtaposed  with  their  rational  chemic 
formulae,  their  relative  looseness  or  closeness  of  molecular  con- 
struction and  affinities,  with  their  relations  to  temperature,  solu- 
bility, etc.  The  rapidity  or  slowness  of  compounds  to  enter  into 
new  combinations  under  the  conditions  afforded  by  the  bodily 
organs  has  greatly  to  do  with  the  therapeutic  effects.  Antipyretic 
influence  can  be  exerted  through  action  upon  the  blood  vessel 
tonus  or  the  blood  corpuscles,  and  in  some  instances  upon  the 
thermal  brain  centers  demonstrated  by  Ott.  Antisepsis  can  be 
conceived  in  such  preparations  as  acting  directly  upon  septic 
material  or  so  modifying  their  products  or  the  vital  fluids  as  to 
lessen  septic  activity.  Antagonism  to  fermentation  is  often  prac- 
tically antisepsis.  Analgesia  can  result  from  the  direct  influence 
of  antiseptics  upon  irritative  points  susceptible  to  their  influence ; 
from  allaying  some  consequence  of  irritation  such  as  an  acceler- 
ated circulation  which  aggravates  pain,  and  if  pain  is  due  to  cir- 
culatory faults  mainly  or  wholly  this  effect  upon  the  heart,  arter- 
ies, or  blood  tends  to  relief.  The  visible  change  in  the  blood  ma- 
terials claimed  by  Cesari  when  antipyrin  is  given  can  readily  be 
tentatively  assumed  as  a  cause  of  heat  reduction,  and  incidentally 
pain  alleviation.  The  rush  of  phagocytes  to  an  irritated  point  is 
accompanied  with  accumulation  of  red  blood  corpuscles.  Pain 
can  not  continue  without  the  material  that  enables  molecular 


470  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

activity,  and  this  material  is  afforded  by  the  blood  and  lymph. 
Drive  away  congestion  and  though  the  cause  of  the  irritation 
may  remain,  its  influence  is  lessened  greatly,  and  the  warrior 
wandering  cells  have  better  opportunity  to  attack  the  foreign 
material  unless  they  also  are  driven  from  the  field  of  battle.  The 
pain  of  a  *'bone  felon"  is  modified  by  holding  the  hand  aloft ;  the 
Esmarch's  bandage  anesthetizes  by  blood  deprivation ;  freezing 
anesthetizes  similarly.  Derivation  may  not  be  the  means  by 
which  a  disorder  can  be  cured,  but  when  blood  accumulation  in 
an  organ  is  pathologic  its  distribution  at  least  facilitates  recovery. 

When  the  professor  set  his  cerebral  machinery  in  motion  so 
that  his  brain  required  blood  and  withdrew  it  from  the  optic  that 
was  being  irritated  by  the  cinder,  the  pain  was  absent  until  the 
lecture  was  concluded.  Similarly,  the  seat  of  consciousness  can 
be  affected  by  hysteric,  erratic  blood-vessel  action,  so  as  to  pro- 
duce or  terminate  pain  and  paralysis  through  mental  influence, 
and  the  pain  suppression  occasionally  accomplished  under  hyp- 
notic conditions  is  undoubtedly  of  this  nature,  and  the  seat  of 
consciousness  may,  through  derivation  of  blood  by  physical  or 
mental  action,  be  similarly  affected.  The  operation  of  the  nutri- 
ent reflexes  in  connection  with  every  nerve  impulse  should  have 
careful  regard  by  physiologists,  and  many  a  mystery  would  be 
thus  disposed  of.  The  association  of  antiseptic  properties  with 
the  analgesic  and  antipyretic  in  so  many  of  the  phenetidin  com- 
pounds is  also  worthy  of  consideration.  If  such  antisepsis  is 
secured  through  a  direct  action  of  the  medicament  upon  living 
plant  and  animal  micro-organisms,  within  the  varying  degrees 
of  arresting  or  destroying  their  vitality  analgesia  likewise  could 
ensue  from  chemical  lowering  of  nerve  function,  directly  or 
through  blood  changes  such  as  occur  with  antipyrin. 

So  it  ceases  to  be  remarkable  that  a  substance  hostile  to  minute 
organisms,  an  antiseptic,  should  also  act  as  an  antipyretic  and 
analgesic  by  chemically  exerting  control  over  such  vital  opera- 
tions as  heat  and  pain  production  of  higher  organisms.  These 
lessened  molecular  activities  are  exerted  in  different  degrees  by 
the  different  compounds;  some  are  too  strongly  antiseptic  to  be 
safely  used  as  analgesics  or  antipyretics ;  nevertheless  the  three 
properties  are  connected,  notably  in  the  case  of  carbolic  acid, -and. 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  47I 

to  a  safer  therapeutic  extent  in  the  phenetidin  derivatives. 

All  the  senses  and  emotions  have  their  associated  pains  and 
pleasures.  Strong  light  may  pain  the  eyes  (photophobia),  due  to 
a  normal  or  abnormal  sensitiveness,  and  we  speak  of  a  painful 
sight.  Smells  may  pain,  the  very  breathing  may  be  painful.  Sounds 
may  pain  by  intensity,  disagreeableness  or  association.  The  touch 
sense  is  pained  by  a  bruise  or  stroke.  The  operation  of  the  senses 
may  be  attended  with  pain  and  with  pleasure,  but  as  a  rule  the 
pleasure  is  the  negative,  the  absence  of  pain.  In  the  absence  of 
all  mental  pain  and  responsibility  the  insane  person,  especially 
the  paretic  dement,  fancies  he  is  enjo\ing  pleasure. 

The  atoms  are  blindly  attracted  and  a  state  of  tension  or  un- 
satisfied combination  may  be  compared  to  pain,  a  gratified  com- 
bination of  pleasure.  The  ignorant  are  guided  less  by  reason  and 
more  by  palate  and  immediate  desires.  The  subsequent  experi- 
ences and  growth  of  intelligence  change  likes  and  dislikes  radi- 
cally. A  child  or  ignorant  person  will  eat  a  poisonous  fruit  be- 
cause it  tastes  pleasantly.  Through  instruction  a  dread  of  that 
same  fruit  may  be  imparted  and  the  knowledge  of  poison  deters 
the  child  from  eating  it.  The  difficulty  of  breathing,  dyspnoea, 
stomach  uneasiness,  and  intestinal  distress,  are  among  the  most 
rudimentary  and  earliest  of  painful  feelings. 

Happiness  is  a  condition  of  mind  often  confused  with  the 
means  of  happiness.  It  is  purely  relative  as  shown  by  the  tramp 
when  presented  with  $io  being  elated,  and  the  wealthy -person 
taking  his  life  when  his  losses  reduced  him  to  $50,000  per  year 
income.  Bishop  Butler  claims  that  ''happiness  is  the  congruity 
between  a  creature's  nature  and  its  circumstances."  Darwin  sug- 
gests that  some  instincts  are  determined  by  fear  or  other  painful 
feeling.  Heredity  may  prompt  to  action  without  either  pain  or 
pleasure.  A  pointer  cannot  help  pointing,  hence  pleasure  or  pain 
is  not  the  incentive  to  actions  in  all  cases.  A  habit  may  be  blindly 
followed  and  cause  disagreeable  feelings  if  interfered  with.  Suf- 
fering is  a  universal  rule  in  accomplishing  anything.  Effort  must 
be  made  and  it  is  often,  not  always,  painful.  Few  changes  are 
made  for  the  better  without  it,  mainly  because  a  tearing  up  of 
old  methods  and  running  counter  to  some  one's  ''rights"  (usually 
to  do  wrong) ,  or  fighting  some  one's  vested  interests,  raise  oppo- 


472  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

sition  and  retaliation.  The  adjustment  of  inner  to  outer  relations 
may  entail  pain  as  in  electrical  states  and  humidity  changes  be- 
fore equilibrium  is  attained,  causing  rheumatism  and  amputation 
pains  to  increase  and  neuralgias  may  be  made  worse  for  similar 
reasons. 

Lower  animals  feel  pleasure  and  pain,  happiness  and  misery, 
in  varying  degrees,  according  to  the  development  of  their  sensory 
apparatus. 

To  be  satisfied  is  essentially  repletion,  in  one  way,  and  con- 
tentment in  another.  It  may  be  associated  with  retrogression  at 
times,  through  its  inducing  cessation  of  function,  for  effort  is  a 
main  cause  of  development.  The  end  of  anxiety  may  also  be 
recuperative,  if  it  does  not  result  in  supineness.  A  poor  man  may 
become  rich  and  fairly  contented,  but  his  riches  in  many  ways 
may  not  prove  beneficial.  What  would  cause  pain  to  a  person 
may  become  a  pleasure,  later,  or  be  regarded  with  indifference. 
Toleration  for  stenches  and  unpleasant  tastes  may  be  acquired  or 
reconciled,  as  in  eating  a  Java  fruit  or  limburger  cheese.  De- 
composition odors  are  offensive  by  association  and  asphyxia  ef- 
fects. Animals  vary  in  their  tolerance  of  sense  impressions, 
especially  odors,  and  have  attraction  to  some  very  disgusting 
smells.    Chinese  and  Arabian  music  is  appalling  to  Europeans. 

The  aged  sometimes  regret  their  past,  as  when  young  they 
yielded  to  temporary  attractions  regardless  of  future  pain.  It 
requires  a  high  development  to  refrain  from  immediate  enjoy- 
ment for  the  sake  of  others  and  the  future. 

The  savage  and  the  revert  may  take  pleasure  in  inflicting  pain 
upon  others,  though  quite  capable  of  knowing  what  pain  is. 

Dogs  and  apes  resent  being  ridiculed  or  laughed  at;  they 
keenly  feel  the  degradation  and  try  to  protect  themselves  from  it. 

There  is  a  pleasure  on  the  part  of  the  average  person  in  feel- 
ing that  one  who  was  looked  up  to  has  been  dragged  down  to  the 
general  level,  because  superiority  is  unwillingly  acknowledged, 
and  there  is  delight  in  degrading  others.  It  is  because  of  this 
that  gossip  and  malice,  uncharitableness  and  disparagement  are 
so  common. 

Note  that  when  the  weather  bureau  makes  a  wrong  prediction 
of  the  weather  many  are  happy  in  chattering  of  the  fallibility  of 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  473 

science,  even  though  ninety  per  cent  of  successful  predictions  are 
made  unnoticed.  The  ignorant  Hke  to  fancy  that  no  one  knows 
any  more  than  they  do.  It  elevates  them  in  their  own  estimation 
above  those  who  offend  them  with  superiority. 

Dr.  Lange,  a  Danish  physician,  first  suggested  that  the  or- 
ganic conditions  with  their  various  manifestations  provoked  by 
an  internal  or  external  excitation  or  by  an  idea,  the  appetites, 
needs,  desires  and  inclinations  are  the  primary  elements  in  emo- 
tions and  that  the  emotion  itself  is  nothing  but  the  revelation  of 
these  things  to  consciousness.  Pleasure  and  pain  follow  the 
changes  in  the  tendencies  of  the  organism  as  the  shadow  follows 
the  body.  Where  the  normal  person  feels  pleasure  the  abnormal 
may  feel  pain ;  pathological  conditions  may  pervert  tastes  and 
instincts ;  bloodlessness,  gout,  rheumatism,  dyspepsia,  heart  dis- 
ease and  other  diseases  frequently  cause  such  perversions  of  emo- 
tions. So  consciousness  is  a  mere  spectator,  and  is  not  con- 
cerned in  the  making  of  emotions.  Intoxicants,  shower  baths, 
chemicals,  may  paralyze  the  blood  vessels  and  influence  the  de- 
gree of  the  emotion,  so  by  suppressing  the  motor  manifestations 
we  also  suppress  the  corresponding  emotions.  What  the  move- 
ments of  the  body  and  its  apparatus  express  objectively  con- 
sciousness expresses  subjectively.  Binet  and  others  hold  that 
pleasure  is  merely  the  consciousness  of  a  feeling  of  complete 
equilibrium  within  the  limit  of  the  needs,  tendencies  and  desires. 
Deviations  by  addition  or  subtraction  produce  the  sensation  of 
pain,  a  negative  pain  if  above,  and  a  positive  pain  if  below  the 
plane  of  satisfaction.  There  is  no  disagreeable  or  agreeable 
quality  of  a  sensation,  all  depends  on  degrees  of  intensity.  Every 
excitation,  actual  or  revived,  produces  certain  modification  in  the 
circulatory,  respiratory  and  secretive  systems.  The  nature  of  the 
interested  organs  determines  the  special  character  of  the  emotion 
which  is  produced,  the  intensity  of  the  modification  determines 
the  agreeable  or  disagreeable  tone  of  the  emotions.  The  affective 
life  is  thus  intimately  related  to  the  fundamental  phenomena  of 
organic  life  and  primarily  to  motion. 

The  pain  of  grief  can  be  ascribed  to  the  interruptions  of  nerv- 
ous and  vascular  workings  to  which  we  are  regularly  accus- 
tomed.   Charcot  cites  an  instance  of  the  inability  to  grieve  in  one 


474  '^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

case  being  due  to  impairment  of  the  visual  centers.  The  mer- 
chant could  form  no  idea  (mental  picture)  to  himself  of  how  his 
friend  appeared,  and  hence  his  sympathy  was  at  a  loss  for  a  sub- 
ject upon  which  to  exercise  it. 

**He  cried  like  a  calf,"  is  a  remark  sometimes  heard.  It  is  no 
disgrace  for  a  calf  to  cry,  and  he  sheds  tears  in  quantities  when 
his  emotions  justify  them.  It  is  even  easier  for  him  to  cry  than 
for  many  other  animals,  because  his  lachrymal  apparatus  is  per- 
fect and  very  productive.  Ruminants  weep  most  readily.  Hunt- 
ers have  long  known  that  a  deer  at  bay  cries  profusely.  The  tears 
will  roll  down  the  nose  of  a  bear  when  he  feels  that  his  last  hour 
is  approaching.  The  big,  tender  eyes  of  the  giraffe  fill  with  tears 
as  he  looks  at  the  hunter  who  has  wounded  him.  Dogs  weep 
very  easily.  The  dog  has  tears  both  in  his  eyes  and  voice  when 
his  beloved  master  goes  away  and  leaves  him  tied  up  at  hom^. 
Some  varieties  of  monkeys  seem  to  be  particularly  addicted  to 
crying,  and  not  a  few  aquatic  mammals  also  find  it  easy  to  weep 
when  the  occasion  requires  it.  Seals,  in  particular,  are  often 
seen  to  cry.  Elephants  weep  profusely  when  wounded  or  when 
they  see  that  escape  from  their  enemies  is  impossible.  The  ani- 
mals here  mentioned  are  the  chief  ones  that  are  known  to  weep, 
but  there  is  no  doubt  that  many  others  also  display  similar 
emotion. 

In  ''Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology"  I  gave  the 
derivation  of  weeping  from  associated  serviceable  habit  of  shed- 
ding tears  to  moisten  eyeballs  pained  by  dryness,  fishes  having 
their  eyes  bathed  in  water,  and  salt  tears  are  developed  later  in 
batrachia. 

Schopenhauer  holds  it  is  the  good  which  is  negative,  in  other 
words  happiness  and  satisfaction  always  imply  some  desire  ful- 
filled, some  state  of  pain  brought  to  an  end.  Pain  can  be  posi- 
tive because  it  means  a  tension  of  molecules,  which  relieved  means 
pleasure,  for  a  short  while,  but  is  followed  by  new  desires,  affini- 
ties and  new  molecular  possibilities. 

"The  pleasure  in  this  world  outweighs  the  pain,  or  there  is  a 
balance  between  the  two.  If  the  reader  wishes  to  see  whether 
this  statement  is  true  let  him  compare  the  respective  feelings  of 
two  animals,  one  of  which  is  engaged  in  eating  the  other. 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEELINGS.  475 

''One  with  a  soul  above  the  common  or  a  man  of  genius  will 
occasionally  feel  like  some  noble  prisoner  of  state,  condemned  to 
work  in  the  galleys  with  common  criminals,  and  he  will  follow 
his  example  and  try  to  isolate  himself."^* 

Happiness  is  best  not  sought,  and  then  it  comes  unexpectedly. 
Those  who  seek  it  are  chasing  phantoms.  Voltaire  claims  that 
happiness  is  but  a  dream  and  sorrow  is  real.  So  to  live  happily 
means  to  live  a  tolerable  life — less  unhappily. 

Relativity  is  evident  in  little  things  annoying  when  there  are 
no  great  ones  to  do  so,  and  when  there  are  the  little  troubles  are 
unfelt. 

In  paretic  dementia  trifles  annoy  and  serious  matters  do  not, 
as  the  brain  is  degraded  beyond  reaching  to  the  larger  concep- 
tions, but  remains  irritable  to  the  lesser. 

Some  sayings  that  are  worthy  of  study  among  multitudes  that 
are  accepted,  but  that  will  not  bear  close  examination,  are : 

The  happiness  we  receive  from  ourselves  is  greater  than  that 
we  obtain  from  our  surroundings.^^  Men  are  not  influenced  by- 
things,  but  by  their  thoughts  about  things.^®  The  man  born  with 
a  talent  he  is  meant  to  use  finds  his  greatest  happiness  in  using 
it.^^  Many  rich  are  unhappy  because  uncultured.  What  a  man 
is  contributes  more  to  happiness  than  what  a  man  has.  The 
more  a  man  has  in  himself  the  less  inclined  he  is  to  company.^® 
Properly  constituted  people  long  for  action  and  soon  tire  of 
leisure,  not  excepting  the  student  who  longs  for  what  others  call 
leisure  to  enable  him  to  exercise  his  brain. 

Pain  may  be  regarded  as  positive  because  it  is  based  on  a 
tension  of  unsatisfied  molecules.  When  they  are  satisfied  pleas- 
ure may  be  said  to  result,  but  this  means  new  desires,  new  affin- 
ities and  new  molecular  cravings.  For  this  reason  atoms, 
animals  and  men  can  never  be  satisfied,  notwithstanding  it  is  as 
Marcus  Aurelius  Antoninus  says,  that  *'the  greatest  part  of  what 
we  say  and  do  is  really  unnecessary.       If  a  man  takes  this  to 

^*  Schopenhauer,  Essays  on  Pessimism. 

'^  Metrodorus,  a  disciple  of  Epicurus. 

'*■  Epictetus. 

"  Goethe,  Wilhelm  Meister. 

^*  Schopenhauer. 


47^  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

heart  he  will  have  more  leisure  and  less  uneasiness."  The  ''Ar- 
cadian happiness  and  simplicity"  were  mere  fables. ^^ 

David  Hume  remarks  the  relativity  of  pains  and  pleasures 
thus :  "In  all  kinds  of  comparison  an  object  makes  us  always 
receive  from  another  to  which  it  is  compared,  a  sensation  con- 
trary to  what  arises  from  itself  in  its  direct  and  immediate  sur- 
vey. The  direct  survey  of  another's  pleasure  naturally  gives  us 
pleasure,  and  therefore  produces  pain  when  compared  with  our 
own.  His  pain  considered  in  itself  is  painful,  but  augments  the 
idea  of  our  happiness  and  gives  us  pleasure."  The  underlying 
explanation  is  in  our  selfish  dislike  that  others  should  enjoy  what 
we  have  not  and  our  pleasure  that  others  suffer  more  than  we 
do.  So  the  comfortable  man  looks  out  of  the  window  upon  the 
one  in  the  storm  and  cold,  as  the  wealthy  complacently  regard 
the  poor  as  getting  what  they  deserve.  Divine  favors  being  re- 
served for  Baer  and  other  coal  barons.  Exceptionally,  where 
the  secondary  ego,  the  true  altruism,  is  developed  in  rich  or  poor, 
this  is  not  the  case,  and  sympathy  may  persist  under  all  circum- 
stances, but  this  is  most  often  in  the  poor  or  in  those  like  Pro- 
basco,  who  impoverished  themselves  to  help  others.  Ordinarily 
we  comfort  ourselves  by  knowing  that  others  are  either  as  badly 
off,  or  are  worse  off,  than  ourselves. 

In  Comparative  Physiology  and  Psychology  I  gave  the  origin 
of  laughter  as  being  from  the  eating  motions,  the  deglutitive 
chuckle  and  gobble  of  the  hogs  and  other  animals,  and  that  later 
association  transferred  the  originally  serviceable  gobbling  move- 
ments, which  accidentally  caused  sounds,  to  expressions  of  allied 
content  and  satisfaction.  The  grunt  of  savage  assent  can  be 
readily  derived  from  his  uncouth  noises  at  meals.  The  ready 
laugh  of  the  appeased  infant  at  the  breast  shows  the  origin  of 
this  expression  of  happiness  quite  plainly.  It  has  also  under- 
gone inhibition  so  that  it  is  not  now  manifested  so  readily  except 
among  the  uncultivated.  Man  is  by  no  means  ''the  only  animal 
that  laughs,"  as  has  Been  asserted.  Pleased  dogs,  for  example, 
of  some  breeds  with  mobile  mouths ;  others  laugh  with  their  tails, 
or  the  wriggle  of  their  bodies. 

'^  Hansen,  The  Lands  of  Greece,  p.  381. 


THE    SENSES    AND    FEEEINGS.  477 

The  association  of  discomfiture  with  laughter  points  to  its 
animal  origin  of  pleasure  in  destruction  in  devouring  other  ani- 
mals. We  laugh  when  others  are  less  fortunate  than  ourselves. 
Sympathy  may  develop  into  taking  no  pleasure  in  the  sufferings 
of  others,  if  directly  under  our  observation,  but  for  suffering  in 
the  abstract,  such  as  a  distant  famine,  we  have  no  sympathy,  as 
imagination  is  not  strong  enough  to  thus  enlarge  our  sympathy. 

Excitement  includes  by  gradations  everything  that  the  animal, 
as  such,  can  do,  from  sleeping  to  fighting  or  running.  Under 
activities  of  feeling  and  emotion,  graded  from  mere  sensations, 
as  every  other  mental  excitement  originates,  we  have  joy  and 
sorrow  as  pleasure  and  pain  expressions.  They  are  recalled 
only  through  remembering  our  ideas  in  regard  to  them  and  the 
things  said  at  the  time,  hence  it  is  folly  to  expect  to  find  such 
things  as  centres  in  the  brain,  for  joy  and  sorrow,  they  are  gen- 
eral feelings  of  satisfaction  or  unsatisfied  tension.  Any  pleasant 
memory  may  cause  joy  and  high  spirits.  The  joy  of  maternal 
love  is  a  selfish  feeling,  possible  only  where  the  nerve  and  sense 
development  enables  offspring  to  be  recognized.  Paternal  love  is 
later  in  development  and  springs  from  proprietorship  and  duty, 
with  occasional  vanity.  Both  parental  affections  may  be  culti- 
vated for  foster  children.  Habit  and  heredity  have  largely 
created  such  likings,  just  as  they  have  also  made  ingratitude  of 
children  the  rule.  Hope,  according  to  James  Mill,  is  anticipation 
of  an  agreeable  feeling,  hence  it  is  a  memory  exercise,  a  renewed 
sensation,  as  joy  is  the  realization  of  what  is  anticipated. 

Desires  and  cravings  are  based  on  atomic  tensions,  they  are  or- 
ganic appetites,  associated  or  not  with  consciousness,  involving 
subjective  feeling,  vague,  misunderstood  or  otherwise.  Atten- 
tion and  choice  are  also  involved  if  consciousness  and  will  power 
are  included. 


CHAPTER  XIV. 
THE  INSTINCTS  AND  EMOTIONS. 

The  many  functions  of  body  and  mind  are  so  blended  and 
depend  upon  each  other  to  such  different  extents  that  no  sharp 
divisions  can  be  made  between  these  functions.  Arbitrary  group- 
ings can  be  used  with  the  understanding  that  they  are  only  for 
convenience  of  classifying  and  are  not  natural  separations.  Thus 
instincts,  emotions,  feelings,  and  even  sensations,  are  often  insep- 
arable, and  as  consciousness,  and  frequently  some  forms  of  reason, 
are  unavoidably  included  in  intelligence,  the  artificiality  of  any 
system  of  tabulation  of  animal  activities  is  evident,  though  in  a 
general  way  an  attempt  of  the  sort  is  useful  and  justified. 

Thus  among  feelings,  emotions  and  instincts  the  sexual  desires 
-could  be  entered,  and  in  higher  intellectual  life  this  passion  devel- 
ops into  love  by  being  bound  up  with  a  lot  of  mental  processes, 
comprising  reason,  judgment,  aesthetic  considerations,  and  even 
self-sacrifice ;  the  sexual  ardor  thus  ceases  to  be  merely  instinct, 
as  it  includes  too  much,  nevertheless  its  base  is  in  an  instinct  of 
the  most  powerful  kind. 

Joy,  grief,  hope,  hate  engage  these  so-called  feelings,  and  are 
instinctive  and  emotional,  but  for  convenience  we  can  profitably 
place  the  first  two  under  Feelings,  and  the  others  under  Emotions, 
but  capable  of  criticism  in  any  case,  no  matter  what  disposition 
is  made  of  them,  except  this  tentative  apologetic  one. 

Spencer  calls  instinct  compound  reflex  action,  or  organic 
memory,  and  observes  that  memory  is  also  an  instinct  which  by 
multiplication  of  experiences  is  made  stronger,  and  memory  is  in- 
cipient instinct,  and  between  instinct  and  reason  there  is  no  gap. 
J.  A.  Thompson^  discusses  instinct  and  refers  to  Spencer's  defini- 
tion that  it  is  reflex  action,  non-mental,  an  adjustment  of  nerves 
and  muscles,  partly  conscious,  and  that  reason  or  intelligence  is 

^The  Study  of  Animal  Life,  N.  Y.,  1896,  pp.  153,  166. 

478 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  479 

the  faculty  of  adjusting  means  to  ends,  but  for  that  matter  so  is 
instinct,  which  is  reflex  action,  however  compHcated.  Reason 
may  precede  instinct  in  the  individual,  as  when  learning  to  play 
the  piano  or  to  paint  pictures  requiring  attention  and  interest  of 
some  sort,  also  conscious  effort,  and  finally  when  a  piece  of  music 
is  mastered,  neither  consciousness  nor  effort  is  required,  as  the 
musician  may  play  instinctively,  or  in  his  sleep.  Deviation  from 
easy  machine-like  muscular  motions  when  once  acquired,  of  course 
involving  brain  and  nerve  habitual  adjustment,  is  so  difficult  as  to 
compel  the  painter  to  use  his  left  hand  when  he  wishes  to  over- 
come an  undesirable  precision  of  touch  that  constitutes  his  "style." 
A  penman  may  resort  to  similar  means.  This  tract  definition  of 
the  nerves  succeeds  reason,  though  inherited  or  other  instinct  may 
be  through  tearing  up  of  tracts  disintegrated  by  reason  and  sub- 
sequently reinstated  as  instinct  again  of  a  different  kind.  That 
instinct  is  the  end  and  destruction  of  reason  is  markedly  evident  in 
its  causing  the  death  of  numberless  animals,  as  in  the  case  of  the 
Norwegian  lemmings,  that  swim  out  to  sea  to  perish  in  their  in- 
stinctive, inherited  efforts  and  desires  to  reach  some  farther-off 
land. 

Inherited  traits  necessarily  accompany  and  depend  upon  trans- 
mitted arrangement  of  brain  shapes,  grouping  of  nerve  bundles 
and  fibrils,  and  where  reason  attempts  to  introduce  new  habits  or 
adjustments,  some  of  these  old  built-up  tracts  must  be  torn  up  to 
accomplish  new  ends ;  effort,  and  even  painful  consciousness  ai  c 
often  required  in  such  changes,  and  finally  new  habits  may  be 
built  upon  the  downfall  of  the  old,  more  readily  in  youth,  when 
the  brain,  nerves,  etc.,  are  more  pliable,  than  when  later  they  are 
too  firmly  organized.  Hence  the  fixity  of  habits  of  age  and  the 
capabilities  of  starting  in  new  directions  when  young. 

Coughing  and  sneezing  were  once  voluntary  acts ;  fishes  still 
retain  the  ability  to  remove  offensive  substances  from  their  throats 
at  will,  but  through  incessant  repetition  evolution  has  fostered 
these  acts  as  unconsciously,  unintentionally,  instinctively,  per- 
formed reflexes,  when  foreign  irritating  matters  are  to  be  ex- 
pelled from  the  throat. 

Darwin  observes  that  as  man  possesses  the  same  senses  as  the 
lower  animals,  his  fundamental  intuitions  must  be  the  same.    Man 


480  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

has  also  some  instincts  in  common,  as  that  of  self-preservation,, 
sexual  love,  the  maternal  love  for  offspring  new  born,  the  desire  of 
the  latter  to  suck,  and  so  forth. 

Instinct  sometimes  lessens  as  the  intellect  develops.  Darwin 
notes  that  intelligent  actions  after  being  performed  during  sev- 
eral generations  become  converted  into-  instincts  and  are  inherited, 
as  when  birds  on  ocean  islands  leani  to  avoid  man. 

There  seems  to  be  a  relation  between  a  few  degrees  of  intel- 
ligence and  a  strong  tendency  to  the  formation  of  fixed,  though 
not  inherited  habits ;  persons  slightly  imbecile  tend  to  act  in  every- 
thing by  routine  or  habit,  and  they  are  rendered  happier  if  this 
is  encouraged.-  The  aged  person  and  the  senile  dement  particu- 
larly tend  to  this  fixity  of  actions. 

Most  activities  al-e  founded  on  the  memory  of  past  events,  on 
foresight,  reason  and  imagination,  in  both  man  and  animals,  and 
these  may  become  fixed,  instinctive,  or  habitual. 

Wallace^  says  that  much  intelligent  work  done  by  man  is  due 
to  imitation  and  not  to  reason.  While  man  has  to  learn  by  prac- 
tice, the  beaver  and  bird  build,  and  the  spider  spins  its  web,  appar- 
ently as  well  the  first  time  it  tries  as  when  old  and  experienced. 
He  thinks  that  the  Indians  travel  the  trackless  deserts  by  instinct, 
that  both  instinct  and  reason  are  displayed  by  birds  in  building 
nests,  and  that  men  build  by  reason  and  imitation,  and  he  tells  how 
young  birds  learn  to  build  nests,  but  that  the  skill  of  birds  is 
exaggerated,  and  that  the  works  of  mankind  are  mainly  imitative. 
Birds  alter  and  improve  their  nests  as  men  do  their  homes. 

In  a  rough  way  we  may  divide  the  nerve  centres  for  reason 
and  emotion.  The  lowest  levels  being  assigned  to  reflexes,  the 
highest  for  reason,  anid  the  intermediate  for  emotional  expression. 
The  baby  responds  reflexly,  the  youth  emotionally,  and  the  adult 
more  reasonably  as  the  higher  systems  are  organized.  Failure  of 
development  may  leave  the  idiot  a  baby  through  life,  the  imbecile 
an  emotional  youth,  however  old  he  may  grow,  precocity  develops 
some  in  advance  of  their  age  and  always  erratically,  often  asso- 
ciated with  tuberculosis  of  the  brain. 

You  may  experience  an  involuntary  feeling  of  disgust  or  even 

'  Descent  of  Man,  Chapter  on  Mental  Powers. 
'Natural  Selection,  Ch,  IV,  Instinct. 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  481 

dislike  the  decrepit,  the  doddering,  the  helpless,  or  the  beggars, 
and  this  feeling  may  surprise  and  mortify  you,  but  it  is  one  for 
which  you  are  not  accountable,  for  it  is  your  inheritance  from 
thousands  of  years  of  your  progenitors,  and  is  an  expression  of 
the  cruel  dislike  of  the  animal  to  whatever  appeals  to  us  for  aid, 
because  likely  to  interfere  with  our  selfish  personal  comfort. 

In  special  instances  this  repugnance  has  been  largely  over- 
come and  yields  to  the  sense  of  duty,  to  habit  and  to  other  antag- 
onisms of  reason  or  sympathy,  but  the  brute  instinct  is  there  ready 
to  astonish  you  by  its  presence  in  most  unexpected  ways,  show- 
ing that  consciousness  is  one  thing  and  emotion  another.  Further, 
you  may  be  guilty  of  a  cruelty  or  neglect  and  your  consciousness 
becomes  aware  of  it  afterward,  and,  according  to  your  training, 
subsequent  feelings  of  approval  or  disapproval  also  arise  in  your 
consciousness,  but  this  latter  did  not  proceed  or  originate,  or  even 
suggest,  any  such  feelings,  impulses  or  acts.  It  merely  felt  what 
you  thought  or  did.  What  is  intellect  in  an  animal  may  become 
instinctive  later,  and  changes  in  environment  may  compel  the 
animal  to  forsake  his  instinctive  inclinations  and  resort  to  reason 
again.  Animals  herding  together  are  more  apt  to  depend  upon 
instinct  such  as  imitation,  while  the  non-social  develop  thought  for 
themselves.  The  migration  of  birds  and  fishes  and  hibernation 
of  some  mammals  are  instincts.  The  homing  pigeon  has  a  re- 
markable instinct.  Ants,  bees  and  beavers  are  specialized  in 
their  development  so  as  to  make  them  instinctive  workers  in  cer- 
tain narrow  lines. 

Money  getting  is  an  instinct  which  among  capitalists  is  asso- 
ciated with  the  pleasures  of  achievement.  The  instinct  of  work 
is  derived  from  the  need  of  movement.  Animals  instinctively 
avoid  poisons  and  serpents.  An  egg-sucking  monkey  will  exhibit 
his  abilities  soon  after  birth.  The  chicken,  when  hatched,  pecks 
at  the  fly.  Seton  Thompson  tells  of  Lobo  the  wolf  developing  his 
instincts  into  intelligent  methods  and  dying  through  faithfulness 
to  his  mate. 

Lines  of  least  resistance  through  heredity  and  associated  ser- 
viceable habit  determine  the  presence  and  extent  of  instincts  and 
emotions,  and  the  insane  are  apt  to  exhibit  these  basic  matters 


482  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

when  the  intellect  is  sufficiently  degraded  to  lose  control  over 
them. 

Religious  and  political  excitement  are  means  of  emotional 
exhibition,  but  not  emotions  by  themselves,  as  supposed  by  those 
who  speak  of  religious  insanity,  when  the  religious  excitement  was 
a  mere  means  of  showing  the  insane  emotionalism  which  pre- 
existed. 

Fear  is  a  universally  distributed  emotion,  developing  in  vari- 
ous directions  and  associated  with  everything  that  any  animal 
may  do.  Even  plants  that  shrink  from  touch  may  have  at  least 
the  motor  part  of  the  fear  reflex  if  the  sensory  is  absent.  Emo- 
tional expression  is  divisible  into  that  of  pleasure  or  pain,  sub- 
divided into  laughter,  smiles,  complacency,  according  to  intens- 
ity ;  agony,  astonishment,  grief,  despair,  quiet,  shyness,  the  mixed 
expressions  being  those  of  anger,  sullenness.  Anger  implies  the 
effort  to  remove  or  attack  any  pain  inflicting  agency. 

The  tendency  of  northerners  is  to  suppress  emotional  exhibi- 
tions which  are  common  in  warm  countries.  Songs  are  emotional 
expressions.  Mere  phraseology  or  resonant  words  excite  negroes 
and  others  with  untrained  intellects  more  than  appeals  to  reason. 
For  instance  Bryan  carried  away  his  audience  with  his  "cross  of 
gold"  prettily  worded  sentence  which  when  analyzed  is  silly,  as 
time  convinced  the  people  it  was. 

The  emotions  or  passions  have  no  centres  in  the  brain,  but  arise 
in  the  body  generally  and  later  affect  consciousness,  as  shown  by 
your  asking  yourself  why  you  grew  so  angry,  why  you  should 
have  done  this,  that  or  the  other  impulsive  thing.  Motion  gives 
both  physical  and  mental  pleasure  and  sometimes  enables  pain 
suppression,  its  lowest  form  in  animals  is  that  of  moving  about 
and  among  its  highest  associates  is  the  love  of  freedom. 

Play  of  all  kinds,  even  exercise  of  the  mind,  work,  whether 
physical  or  mental,  gambling,  games  of  the  field  or  of  chance,  all 
are  developed  from  the  absolute  need  of  motion.  Children  are 
tortured  by  being  kept  quiet,  and  hunger  is  the  great  impeller  to 
motion  in  general.  The  sport  of  birds  and  other  animals,  espe- 
cially the  monkeys  and  the  puma,  indicate  its  general  animal  ori- 
gin. Even  under  the  microscope  otherwise  invisible  animals  have 
been  seen  to  play. 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  483 

Sleep  is  instinctive  for  the  purpose  of  distributing  food  to 
brain,  muscle  and  other  bodily  parts  exhausted  just  as  ground  lies 
fallow  till  fertilized,  a  process  requiring  time,  because  the  progres- 
sive chemical  steps  have  to  be  taken  enabling  the  atoms  a  b  c  to 
finally  unite  with  x  y  z,  the  slow  molecular  building  occurring 
during  the  intermediate  stages  as  with  constructing  the  embryo, 
which  also  induces  the  mother  to  sleep  as  nourishment  is  taken 
from  her  to  the  new  organism,  so  it  takes  longer  for  her  to  recu- 
perate. That  sleep  was  a  nutritive  process  I  announced  in  1892 
and  1894.*  Plants  undergo  analogous  resting  processes.^  S.  L. 
Clemens  mentions  shipwrecked  starving  sailors  going  without 
sleep  for  long  periods,  and  in  asylums  the  insane  have  gone  in- 
credible periods  without  sleeping,  facts  accounted  for  by  the  fail- 
ure of  nutritive  processes. 

Dreams  are  faultily  associated  memories,  often  suggested  by 
some  recent  impression,  dropping  off  bed  clothes  may  cause  a 
dream  of  being  naked  in  the  streets,  odors  may  arouse  some  recol- 
lection supposed  to  have  been  forgotten.  The  new  and  the  old 
events  may  be  mixed  up  in  dreams.  Pleasant  happenings  during 
the  day  or  good  ventilation  in  the  sleeping  room  may  cause 
pleasant  dreams,  trouble  during  the  day  may,  with  bad  air  in  the 
room  at  night,  cause  dreams  of  difficulty,  though  not  necessarily 
having  anything  to  do  with  recent  affairs.  Rather  the  reverse. 
Old  folks  often  dream  of  their  grown-up  children  as  babies.  An 
architect  harassed  by  trying  to  make  a  hundred  thousand  dollars 
pay  for  a  million-dollar  structure  may  dream  of  steamboats  sink- 
ing, difficult  hill-climbing,  and  so  on. 

Nightmares  are  mere  brain  congestions.  Healthy  sleep  like 
that  of  the  infant  should  be  dreamless,  and  is  common  to  those 
who  sleep  out  of  doors,  in  trees  or  on  the  ground.  Blind  people 
do  not  have  sight  dreams  if  they  have  always  been  blind,  and  the 
same  can  be  said  of  those  always  deaf  that  they  do  not  dream  in 
terms  of  hearing. 

Arrogance  is  an  animal  trait  cropping  out  in  the  comfortable 
house  dog  who  barks  at  beggars,  the  court  bailiff  who  puts  on 

*  Science,  N.  Y.,  Nov.  11,  1892;  Journal  of  the  American  Medical  Asso- 
ciation, March  10,  1894. 

^  Darwin,  Power  of  Movement  in  Plants. 


484  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

more  airs  than  the  judge,  and  the  rich  man  who  fancies  his 
money  entitles  his  opinion  to  respect  when  he  is  usually  badly 
informed  on  the  topics  he  so  pompously  discusses.  Let  him  lose 
his  money  and  his  surprise  that  his  ignorance  is  openly  laughed 
at  is  instructive  both  to  himself  and  students  of  psychology. 

Deference  is  the  opposite  trait,  shown  by  the  poor  man  till  he 
becomes  rich  also.  Servants  grow  polite  before  the  holidays. 
Cowardice  and  bravery  are  universal  and  are  neither  of  them  con- 
stantly associated  with  worthiness  or  unworthiness.  A  mean  man 
may  be  brave  and  a  generous  one  cowardly,  but  not  necessarily. 
Self-defense  is  practiced  by  all  animals  and  some  plants. 

Anger  is  next  to  fear  as  a  widespread  emotion.  It  is  shown  by 
animals  with  better  defined  reflexes  but  is  often  mixed  with  the 
fear  feeling  which  preceded  anger. 

Revenge  is  desired  most  by  less  highly  organized  people.  Its 
foolishness  is  seen  by  those  furnished  with  the  higher  order  of 
intelligence.  Hatred  and  disgust  are  associated  with  stomach  feel- 
ings, the  expression  *'he  makes  me  sick"  indicating  this.  Rage  is 
expressed  by  canine  tooth  exposure.  Contempt  is  often  vanity, 
superciliousness.  Laughter  is  caused  by  a  suoeriority  feeling 
of  triumph  over  others,  as  when  one  falls  or  is  unfortunate,  the 
inclination  to  laugh  is  ready,  however  ashamed  we  may  be  later, 
unless  sympathy  suppresses  the  ridicule. 

Suspicion  is  a  natural  ingrained  inheritance  evident  in  hunted 
and  persecuted  persons.  Insanity  often  brings  this  to  the  front  as 
delusions  of  persecution.  Extreme  age  may  develop  suspicion, 
because  the  intellect  is  degraded,  allowing  the  animal  instincts  tO' 
appear,  and  this  is  true  of  other  things  than  suspiciousness  in 
some  cases. 

It  is  natural  that  the  feeling  of  being  hunted  and  persecuted 
should  be  associated  with  some  forms  of  insanity  when  the  or- 
ganic memories  of  millions  of  years  of  our  animal  ancestry  are 
bound  up  with  such  feelings,  for  they  were  chased,  slaughtered, 
trapped,  fought  and  otherwise  persecuted  constantly,  and  the  sen- 
sation of  care  is  a  ceaseless  feeling  with  most  of  the  descendants 
of  such  beings,  developing  into  fright  or  suspicion  when  the  mind 
grows  hazy. 

Cruelty  of  animals,  of  children,  adults,  nations  and  of  all  ani- 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  485 

mate  nature  is  apparent  on  all  sides.  While  the  labors  of  such  a 
man  as  Plimsoll  to  have  the  sailors  humanely  treated  may  occa- 
sionally be  rewarded,  most  merciful  measures  have  come  about 
through  evolution  of  adjusting  to  the  lines  of  least  resistance,  to 
expediency,  through  fear  of  consequences  of  not  respecting  the 
rights  of  others.  Even  nature  is  cruel.  A  quiet  landscape  may 
have  been  the  site  of  prowling  fierceness  and  fleeing  terror,  and 
for  millions  of  years  witnessed  the  agony  and  death  of  victims. 
Ladies  with  feathered  hats  and  furs,  are  not  the  less  causes  of 
cruelty  because  the  feathers  were  artificially  arranged  by  a  mil- 
hner  and  the  furs  are  nicely  tanned.  The  Indian  with  the  coarse 
skin  of  an  animal  over  his  loins  and  feathers  in  his  hair  is  the  not 
very  far  off  originator  of  just  such  decoration,  while  vanity  and 
cruelty  combined  are  the  instigators  of  that  sort  of  apparel.  Few 
of  us  care  to  see  butchery  done  and  yet  we  eat  meat  and  enjoy  it. 

Sympathy  is  developed  from  the  adjacency  to  suffering  and  to 
being  able  to  mentally  put  ourselves  in  the  place  of  the  sufferer. 
When  rich  people  are  not  in  contact  with  poor  they  dO'  not  under- 
stand their  needs,  and  when  the  poor  grows  rich  he  usually  for- 
gets his  former  neighbors.  Elephants  are  used  to  decoy  others, 
and  the  stock-yards  decoy  bull,  sheep  or  hog  leads  thre  others  to 
slaughter  as  the  confidence  man  traps  his  victim  into  a  bunco 
game. 

Yet  astonishingly  good  traits  appear  unexpectedly  in  war 
times,  shipwreck  or  trouble.  People  to  whom  we  were  indifferent 
are  revealed  as  sympathetic,  but  all  too  often  opportunity  in 
asylums  and  penitentiaries  affords  the  brute  instincts  a  longed-for 
chance  for  exercise  in  some  attendant  who  was  not  suspected  of 
being  inhuman,  and  also  the  kindest  of  hearts  are  occasionally 
found  in  this  same  class  of  asylum  employes,  but  if  the  atmosphere 
of  the  place  is  too  political  these  well  intentioned  persons  are  liable 
to  abuse  and  dismissal  for  protecting  the  helpless  from  brutality. 
Let  such  matters  be  better  understood  and  institutions  of  the  sort 
will  become  more  humanely  managed,  just  as  seamen  are  nowa- 
days seldom  flogged  and  starved  as  they  were  commonly  in  the 
last  century. 

Unrestrained  power  degrades  its  possesor  and  some  alienists 
speak  of  the  insanity  of  power. 


486  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Maternal  and  paternal  affection  are  common  among  animals, 
the  first  especially.  The  latter  is  more  observable  among  man  as  a 
rather  artificial  article.  The  father  being  as  a  rule  indifferent  to 
his  progeny  in  lower  life,  while  the  mother  shows  care,  at  least, 
while  the  young  are  helpless. 

A  persistent  doing  of  good  with  the  expectation  of  a  heavenly 
reward  and  a  disregard  of  the  reward  on  this  earth  may  become 
a  habit  and  be  intensified  if  long  lines  of  descendants  are  taught 
the  same  thing  until  finally  an  instinct  is  created  to  which  the  last 
in  the  line  cannot  do  violence ;  he  may  even  find  comfort  in  self- 
sacrifice,  though  an  occasional  person  in  this  same  line  of  descent 
may  revert  to  the  primitive  utterly  selfish  stock.  The  other 
worldly  incentive  may  finally  be  extinguished,  and  while  religion 
no  longer  plays  any  part  in  the  good  deeds  done  the  habit  is 
firmly  fixed  and  one  may  become  automatically  generous. 

Gratitude  is  best  seen  in  its  purest  form  in  the  dog  who  is  fed, 
and  how  the  sentiment  gradually  fades  as  he  ceases  to  be  fed.  A 
gift  lays  the  recipient  under  an  irksome  sense  of  obligation.  Some 
succeed  in  removing  this  from  the  memory,  while  the  more  vulgar 
seeks  revenge  for  the  unpleasant  feeling.  This  is  actually  the 
experience  of  physicians  who  suffer  abuse  and  detraction  from 
those  they  have  helped,  because  the  patient  sees  no  other  way  of 
getting  rid  of  the  unpleasant  recollection  of  being  indebted  to 
the  doctor.    High  intelligence  may  maintain  gratitude. 

The  surprise  one  shows  upon  being  made  to  suffer  for  doing 
what  he  regarded  as  a  good  deed  proves  that  he  has  not  foreseen 
consequences  or  has  made  improper  associations  of  the  relations 
of  things,  expecting,  more  likely,  to  be  rewarded  instead  of  pun- 
ished, or  at  least  not  made  to  suffer.  He  may  recall  instances  of 
bad  deeds  being  rewarded  and  infer  that  it  pays  to  do  wrong  and 
that  it  is  inconvenient  to  do  good.  This  again  reveals  the  suppo- 
sition that  rewards  and  punishments  are  connected  with  deeds. 
With  age  he  disassociates  these  matters.  What  is  the  use  of  being 
good  if  we  are  not  punished  for  being  bad?  is  a  frequent  query 
made  without  being  aware  of  the  confession  it  involves  that  good- 
ness was  only  with  expectation  of  reward. 

The  average  novel  concludes  with  things  coming  out  all 
right,  with  rewards  for  merit  and  compensation  for  troubles,  but 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  487 

even  those  who  are  ilHterate  talk  of  such  things  and  expect  them. 
There  is  an  expectation  of  reward  for  the  most  trifling  sacrifice, 
if  not  here  then  hereafter.  A  settled  conviction  that  doing  good 
will  pay,  from  training  doubtless,  being  taught  such  things  dur- 
ing the  receptive  period  of  childhood. 

As  to  friendship  Saadi  reniarks :  "Lend  money  to  the  poor 
and  ask  it  of  the  rich  and  they  will  trouble  you  no  more."  An- 
other sage  suggests  that  the  holy  bond  of  friendship  lasts  through 
a  lifetime  unless  an  attempt  is  made  to  borrow  money.  Too  often 
friendship  is  taken  advantage  of  or  results,  unintentionally,  in 
suffering. 

Conscience  is  the  outcome  of  instruction  and  heredity  com- 
bined. What  we  are  taught  we  should  do  and  should  not  do 
influences  behavior  and  feelings,  but  when  one  loses  an  oppor- 
tunity to  cheat  he  may  also  suffer  the  same  kind  of  remorse  that 
the  one  does  who  has  accidentally  cheated  someone.  So  it  is  all 
a  matter  of  training  and  character,  which  in  turn  results  from 
circumstances.  It  is  the  not  having  done  the  expedient  thing  that 
induces  remorse,  and  it  depends  also  upon  what  the  person  con- 
siders to  be  the  most  expedient. 

A  skye  terrier  stole  a  cutlet  and  in  spite  of  hunger  finally 
brought  it  back  to  its  master,  hung  its  head  in  shame  and  slunk 
away.*^  Habit  may  become  one  of  the  greatest  of  instincts,  actu- 
ally reversing,  in  time,  the  most  primary  workings  of  animal 
nature.  Curing  a  habit  entails  suffering,  but  the  acquiring  of  a 
habit  may  be  gradual,  as  that  of  contention  in  families.  If  the 
environment  which  first  favored  the  acquisition  of  any  trait  per- 
sists with  the  descendants  then  acquired  habits  may  finally  be- 
come instinctive  and  be  transmitted,  for  instance,  in  spite  of  the 
cruelty  and  rapacity  of  our  earlier  progenitors,  the  instruction  of 
teachers,  governesses  and  preachers,  whether  meant  or  not,  with 
the  constant  inducements  by  rewards  in  heaven,  there  has  been 
created  a  natural  type  of  gentleman  and  lady  utterly  different 
from  their  forefathers. 

Imitation  is  a  general  animal  instinct  from  the  very  meanest 
up  to  the  highest  type  of  life.    It  is  what  enables  progress  through 

'■  American  Naturalist,  June,  1885,  p.  621. 


488  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

copying  what  has  been  found  to  be  serviceable.  Mimicry  of  ani- 
mals and  plants  enables  escape  from  enemies  at  times  or  more 
success  in  preying  upon  others.  Hypocricy  is  imitation  and  has 
its  uses  in  the  assuming  to  be  better  than  in  reality,  a  sort  of 
deference  to  superiority,  which  in  time  may  lead  to  the  real  supe- 
riority, if  not  by  the  hypocrite,  at  least  by  others. 

Vanity  is  a  prevalent  animal  instinct,  as  in  the  peacock  and 
rhultitudes  of  other  living  things,  up  to  the  general  who  spends 
his  leisure  in  planning  new  uniforms.  Women  are  notoriously 
vain,  and  to  decorate  themselves  with  bright  rocks,  hides  of  wild 
beasts  and  plumage  of  birds  vast  mercantile  combinations  are 
stimulated,  and  colossal  fortunes  are  piled  up.  Even  the  desire 
for  fame  is  a  species  of  vanity,  but  the  student  who  learns  to  care 
nothing  for  appreciation  is  the  most  apt  to  secure  it.  What  an 
ephemeral  and  worthless  thing  it  is  can  be  seen  in  the  multitudes 
welcoming  Admiral  Dewey  for  his  Spanish  victories,  and  in  a 
few  weeks  being  influenced  against  him,  for  trivial  reasons,  by 
politicians  who  feared  that  he  had  presidential  aspirations. 

Pride  is  a  different  matter,  and  may  be  creditable  in  preserv- 
ing self-respect,  in  spite  of  the  worthless  opinions  of  contem- 
poraries. 

Vanity  renders  us  susceptible  to  flattery,  of  which  fact  the 
demagogue  in  fully  aware,  and  his  superciliousness  is  amusing 
when  he  no  longer  thinks  he  has  need  of  obsequiousness.  The 
low  organized  mind  fancies  it  can  discriminate  where  deference 
and  arrogance  can  be  distributed  and  is  incessantly  making  mis- 
takes. A  step  higher  in  intelligence  develops  the  constantly  po- 
lite person,  but  even  he  may,  like  the  Spanish  captain-general, 
have  a  cruel  disposition.  Vanity  is  independent  of  other  traits, 
as  some  very  estimable  persons  may  be  excessively  vain,  though 
in  most  cases  only  in  their  younger  days.  The  seat  of  vanity 
is  in  the  muscular  consciousness.  It  leads  to  "philanthropy"  in 
the  desire  to  build  monuments,  as  pyramids,  colleges,  etc.  Holmes 
asks  what  is  fame  worth  in  a  planet  whose  crust  is  fossils  and 
whose  centre  is  fire.  Notoriety  is  often  mistaken  for  fame.  The 
Spaniard  is  the  vainest  with  the  least  occasion  for  it.  Detrac- 
tion is  the  favorite  method  of  attempting  to  pull  down  one  who 
has  claims  to  superiority. 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  489 

Thackeray^  remarks  that  a  ruffian  like  Henry  VIII  talked  as 
gravely  about  the  divine  powers  vested  in  him  as  if  he  had  been 
an  inspired  prophet.  A  wretch  like  James  I  not  only  believed 
that  he  has  in  himself  a  particular  sanctity,  but  other  people  be- 
lieved him.  He  was  a  Scotch  snob  without  courage,  generosity, 
honesty  or  brains,  but  just  read  what  the  great  divines  and  doc- 
tors of  England  wrote  about  him.  Charles  II,  his  grandson,  was 
a  rogue,  but  not  a  snob,  whilst  Louis  XIV,  his  old  square  toes 
of  a  contemporary,  the  great  worshiper  of  big-wiggery,  has  al- 
ways struck  me  as  a  most  undoubted  and  royal  snob. 

Speaking  of  ''The  Peerage,"  which  lies  upon  so  many  draw- 
ing-room tables,  he  says:  Considering  the  harm  that  foolish 
lying  book  does  I  would  have  ail  the  copies  of  it  burned,  as  the 
barber  burned  all  Quixote's  books  of  humbugging  chivalry. 

He  asks :  Why  is  the  poor  college  servitor  to  wear  that  name 
dnd  badge  still?  Because  universities  are  the  last  places  into 
which  reform  penetrates.  Thackeray  should  have  become  famil- 
iar with  insane  asylums  run  by  politicians.  He  further  notes 
that  the  English  snob  rampant  has  no  equal  with  such  indomi- 
table belief  in  himself,  that  sneers  you  down,  and  all  the  world 
besides,  and  has  such  insufferable,  admirable,  stupid  contempt 
for  all  people  but  his  own,  nay,  for  all  sets  but  his  own.  In  Eng- 
land the  dinner-giving  snobs  occupy  a  very  important  place  in 
society.  , 

As  to  jealousy: 

''He  who  would  free  from  malice  end  his  days, 
Must  live  obscure  and  never  merit  praise."^ 

Even  a  dog  is  jealous  of  its  master's  affection  if  turned  to 
another  dog.  Envy  may  be  justified  or  unjustified,  as  when  a 
hypocrite  claims  to  be  what  another  may  be  who  fails  of  recog- 
nition ;  in  the  other  case  an  incompetent  may  envy  the  rewards  of 
skill  and  merit.  Lord  Melbourne  said  he  thanked  God  that  in 
the  Order  of  the  Garter  there  was  no  question  of  "damned  merit." 
Pestalozzi  devoted  his  life  to  the  welfare  of  children,  but  was 
impeded  by  the  petty  jealousy  of  the  school  director  of  Burgdorf. 
Dryden  remarks : 

'  The  liook  of  Snobs. 
"Gay. 


490  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

*'And  malice  in  all  critics  reigns  so  high 
That  for  small  errors  they  whole  plays  decry." 

Imitation  induces  followers  in  detraction :  "You  have  many 
enemies  that  know  not  why  they  are  so,  but,  like  to  village  curs, 
bark  when  their  neighbors  do."^  Both  Lord  Nelson  and  Admiral 
Schley  were,  a  hundred  years  apart,  hounded  by  jealous  superiors, 
who  tried  to  steal  the  credit  for  their  victories,  and  such  events 
are  numberless  in  history. 

Deceit  in  all  its  endless  ramifications  is  a  natural  inheritance 
by  all  animals,  and  in  some  plants  it  appears  evident.  Nature  has 
incessantly  deluded  and  the  truth  has  been  hard  to  secure  in  all 
ages,  particularly  when  man  has  often  preferred  to  believe  in 
the  lie. 

However  strange  it  may  appear  to  some,  who  are  inclined  to 
think  otherwise,  there  is  such  a  thing  as  nearly  absolute  honesty. 
An  occasional  person  in  a  community  cannot  stoop  to  a  dishonor- 
able action,  and  we  can  readily  refer  such  dispositions  to  train- 
ing, whether  by  self  or  through  others,  or  to  heredity  where 
training  has  resulted  in  a  modification  of  descendants  through 
persistent  effect  on  lines  of  generations,  and  to  habit,  however  the 
habit  may  have  originated,  and  whatever  may  have  been  the  in- 
centive. Savages  may  be  surprisingly  honest,  while  others  of 
their  tribes  are  not.  Dishonesty  runs  riot  in  civilized  communi- 
ties, while  honesty  is  also  unexpectedly  found  there.  Paradoxical 
as  it  may  seem,  the  utmost  honesty  in  some  particular  may  be  as- 
sociated with  dishonesty  in  others.  Scrupulosity  with  moral  ob- 
tuseness.  It  is  largely  a  matter  of  training,  accepting  ready  made 
ideas  on  all  such  subjects. 

A  sincerely  religious  person  is  often  honest,  as  he  thinks  it 
folly  to  be  otherwise,  since  this  world  has  no  inducements  com- 
pared to  those  of  a  future  existence.  It  is  merely  a  matter  of 
common-sense  with  him  that  riches  in  this  world  are  not  to  be 
compared  to  those  of  another  world.  Now  imagine  a  head  injury 
in  such  a  person  obliterating  the  memory  of  ideas  on  favorite 
topics,  as  the  religious  views  which  guide  his  actions,  then  the 
incentive  to  honesty  being  gone  a  complete  inversion  of  character 

®  Shakespeare. 


THE    INSTINCTS    AND    EMOTIONS.  49I 

may  take  place,  merely  due  to  the  failure  to  recollect  and  there- 
fore to  be  guided  by  such  recollections. 

Opportunity  may  tempt  latent  dishonesty  that  is  common  to 
all  as  an  inheritance  from  our  deceitful  ancestry.  Some  people 
have  better  opportunities  to  steal  than  others,  as  lawyers,  pub- 
lishers and  politicians ;  it  is  not  because  they  are  less  honest  than 
others  that  they  avail  themselves  of  their  chances.  In  the  case 
of  bankers  honesty  is  their  capital,  their  stock  in  trade.  It  pays 
them  to  be  honest  until  the  big  chance  occurs,  as  with  Alvord, 
the  trusted  teller  of  the  First  National  Bank  of  New  York,  who, 
being  so  wholly  trusted,  stole  six  hundred  thousand  dollars. 
Plumbers,  church  and  hospital  treasurers  also  have  good  oppor- 
tunities. 

.  "Never  to  suspect  evil  is  as  fine  as  it  is  foolish,"  says  Schopen- 
hauer. The  trouble  is  that  the  one  whO'  always  looks  for  good  in 
others  is  misplacing  his  regard  and  sees  it  where  it  does  not  exist, 
and  overlooks  it  where  it  really  is  present. 

Pirates  and  freebooters  in  early  days  were  highly  respected; 
nowadays  they  are  merely  disguised,  and  while  we  recognize  the 
real  thief  under  the  disguise  we  accord  him  the  same  respect  our 
ancestors  had  for  Captain  Kidd  and  Robin  Hood.  There  may  be 
honesty  in  one  regard  coupled  with  dishonesty  in  others.  Merely 
a  matter  of  training.  Employes  may  be  honest  with  an  employer 
and  both  be  dishonest  with  the  public. 

There  is  a  French  instance  of  unswerving  integrity.  Lieut. 
Col.  Picquart,  who  has  been  called  the  grandest  man  in  France. 
Honest,  and  with  the  courage  of  his  convictions,  with  hordes  of 
rascals  like  Mercier,  the  would-be  assassin  of  Dreyfus  and 
Labori,  hounding  and  persecuting  him,  with  rewards  offered  him 
for  knavery,  he  persisted  in  telling  the  truth  and  redeemed  the 
character  of  France. 

Deceit  has  its  disadvantages,  for  practiced  upon  others  con- 
stantly it  disables  one  from  seeing  the  truth  at  all.  Cynicism  and 
the  thinking  of  lies  are  among  some  of  these  disadvantages. 

National  dishonesty,  in  treaty  breaking  and  grabbing  of  ter- 
ritory, is  patriotically  approved  by  both  Church  and  State. 


chapte:r  XV. 

THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES. 

Animals,  including  the  primates,  have  the  same  senses,  pas- 
sions, affections  and  emotions  generally,  even  the  complex  ones 
of  jealousy,  suspicion,  emulation,  gratitude  and  even  magnanim- 
ity. They  all  practice  deceit  and  are  revengeful ;  some  are  sus- 
ceptible to  ridicule  and  have  a  sense  of  humor ;  they  feel  wonder 
and  curiosity,  exhibit  the  ability  to  imitate,  to  exert  attention, 
deliberation,  choice,  memory,  imagination ;  they  associate  ideas 
and  have  reasoning  ability  in  varying  degrees.  There  are  differ- 
ences between  animals  of  the  same  kind  as  to  intelligence,  horses 
or  dogs  may  be  idiotic  or  sagacious.  All  animals  are  liable  to 
insanity,  and  to  many  of  the  diseases  common  among  men. 

That  animals  develop  in  intelligence  is  proven  by  the  fact  that 
the  young  can  be  more  readily  caught  than  adults. 

In  Seton-Thompson's  books  he  shows  the  kinship  of  man  and 
animals.  He  tells  of  dignity  and  love,  constancy  in  a  wolf,  sa- 
gacity in  a  crow,  obedience  in  a  partridge,  fidelity  in  a  dog,  moth- 
er love  in  rabbits ;  the  spanking  of  disobedient  cubs  by  she-bears, 
bullyism  in  a  coyote,  the  love  of  liberty  in  a  mustang. 

He  says  that  ''for  the  wild  animal  there  is  no  such  thing  as 
a  gentle  decline  in  peaceful  old  age.  Its  life  is  spent  at  the  front 
in  line  of  battle,  and  as  soon  as  its  powers  begin  to  wane  in  the 
least  its  enemies  become  too  strong  for  it,  it  falls."  When  man 
drops  out  of  his  usual  place  he  leaves  his  defences,  particularly 
as  age  advances.  He  too  is  like  the  wild  animal  and  the  tramp — 
everyone  neglects  or  is  against  him  till  he  dies,  and  even  in  this 
civilized  age  the  murder  of  a  mere  outcast  is  not  inquired  into. 

The  two  wolves,  this  author  mentions,  who  destroyed  two 
hundred  sheep  in  one  night  out  of  pure  wantonness,  are  no  worse 
than  the  county  insane  asylum  employe  who  secured  his  place  by 
political  influence  as  a  reward  for  ballot-box  stuffing,  who  kicked 
in  the  ribs  of  an  inoffensive  helpless  old  dement  because  he  could 

492 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  493 

safely  do  so.  Any  mention  of  such  an  incident  in  the  newspa- 
pers fails  to  interest  the  public,  as  the  reader  concludes  that  the 
matter  is  mentioned  by  some  "fool-reformer,"  or  that  it  is  sensa- 
tionalism for  political  effect.  A  wealthy  citizen  attacked  by  bur- 
glars becomes  the  center  of  deep  interest  and  sympathy. 

There  are  grades  of  intelligence  as  between  the  pike  who  has 
to  bump  his  nose  many  times  against  a  glass  before  he  finally 
learns  that  he  cannot  pass  it,  and  the  monkey  or  savage  who 
learns  from  one  experience. 

Many  birds  have  great  curiosity  as  well  as  caution.  Nor  is  it 
the  only  animal  owning  those  instincts.  Some  animals  are  ex- 
cessively clean,  while  Hindoos  and  some  Spaniards  are  filthy. 

Orangs  have  dispositions  to  fight  like  human  roughs.  The 
female  carries  its  young  precisely  as  do  the  coolies  of  India.  They 
have  human-like  affections,  satisfaction,  pain,  rage  and  pleasure. 
Many  low  races  of  men  make  no  better  homes  than  some  of  the 
higher  apes  do.  Dr.  Hayes  says  that  his  polar  dogs  recognized 
thin  ice  and  separated  widely  so  as  not  to  be  too  heavy  in  one 
spot.  Hozeau  tells  of  dogs  searching  for  water  in  low  spots  of 
ground  as  though  they  knew  that  water  gathered  in  depressions. 
Lubbock  taught  his  dog  to  read  and  smell  words  as  out,  tea,  bone, 
water,  food,  printed  on  cards  which  the  dog  would  bring  as  he 
wished  to  go  out,  to  drink,  to  eat,  etc. 

Old  Spanish  and  French  painters  sometimes  have  hallucina- 
tions-, for  they  make  points,  at  times,  of  imaginary  game,  and 
are  subject  to  epilepsy. 

Domestic  dogs  have  improved  upon  their  ancestry,  the  wolves 
and  jackals,  in  affection,  trustworthiness,  temper  and  probably 
general  intelligence.  Horses  have  been  known  to  seek  the  farrier 
and  hold  up  the  foot  on  which  was  a  broken  shoe.  Intelligence 
is  marked  in  beavers,  ants,  bees,  and  social  crows  are  quick- 
witted. 

Consciousness  may  conveniently  be  ranked  as  a  mode  of  mo- 
tion along  with  other  physical  forces,  in  spite  of  the  prejudice 
against  such  a  view  by  those  who  know  little  about  chemistry  or 
physics.  It  is  connected  with  all  mental  acts  usually;  it  is  the 
form  and  condition  of  all  knowledge,  the  awareness  of  things. 
Sleep,  fainting,  somnambulism  and  delirium  make  intervals  be- 


494  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

tween  conscious  states.  It  may  oscillate  from  one  thing  to  an- 
other and  is  subject  to  fatigue,  being  capable  of  becoming 
stronger,  weaker  or  fresher  by  what  one  does.  Proper  regard 
for  the  circulation  best  accounts  for  the  phenomena,  as  the  vigor 
of  consciousness  depends  on  the  blood  flow.  It  is  occupied  with 
objects,  whether  internal  or  external.  It  is  a  brain  function,  a 
mode  of  molecular  motion,  inherent  in  all  atoms  apparently,  but 
as  cells  unify  the  consciousness  of  atom  and  colonies  of  cells 
create  the  animal  then  the  brain  centralizes  the  colonial  conscious- 
ness. The  higher  developed  brain  affording  the  better  conscious- 
ness and  conditions  determine  differences  in  acuteness  of  the  fac- 
ulty in  all  living  things.  Resistance  increases  consciousness  and 
ease  lessens  it. 

The  usual  objection  to  consciousness  being  a  form  of  energy, 
such  as  heat,  light,  etc.,  is  stated  as  consisting  in  consciousness 
being  a  thing  apart  and  unassociated  with  the  other  forces,  hav- 
ing nothing  to  do  with  matter  in  general  and  not  being  convert- 
ible into  other  forms  of  motion.  The  answers  to  this  could  be 
that : 

The  materials  of  the  brain  are  necessary  to  consciousness. 
Destruction  of  parts  of  the  brain  destroy  consciousness.  When 
badly  nourished  consciousness  is  defective  if  intoxicated  or  too 
greatly  nourished.  If  much  blood  is  sent  to  the  brain,  conscious- 
ness is  increased.  If  the  blood  is  impure  or  lacks  quantity  con- 
sciousness is  imperfect. 

That  consciousness  intermits,  comes  and  goes,  is  paralleled 
by  heat  being  latent  and  other  forces  also,  the  one  being  con- 
verted into  the  other  as  lightning  (electricity)  is  produced  by 
heat  accumulation,  the  one  being  produced  by  conversion  from 
the  other. 

Herzen's  dictum  that  consciousness  is  inversely  as  facility  of 
reflex  and  directly  as  effort  shows  the  association  of  all  forces 
from  consciousness  to  molar.  Tentatively  the  assumption  may  be 
made  that  a  conscious  act  is  the  immediate  and  direct  conversion 
of  consciousness  into  motion  of  the  animal  and  the  motions  of  the 
animal,  including  the  chemical  movements  in  the  brain,  are  what 
arouse  and  constitute  consciousness. 

The  stoppage  of  the  mechanical  movement  of  the  heart  causes 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES. 


495 


the  loss  of  consciousness  by  its  organ  withdrawing  the  materials 
for  its  continuance. 

Consciousness  gradually  develops  from  infancy  to  the  period 
of  life  when  the  faculties  are  at  their  best.  It  fades  with  senility 
and  disease.  It  gradually  rouses  as  the  senses  clear  after  sleep, 
and  is  best  in  proportion  to  sense  acuteness,  vigor,  good  blood 
supply  in  the  brain  and  after  proper  rest. 

You  are  conscious  oi  your  body  and  even  of  your  clothing — 
self-consciousness.  You  learn  by  a  looking-glass  and  what  oth- 
ers say  to  you  about  yourself,  and  these  sense  impressions  you 
accept  as  making  up  your  self-consciousness,  and  you  may  ac- 
cording to  circumstances  have  most  erroneous  opinions  on  this 
as  on  other  subjects.  A  prince  may  be  persistently  flattered  and 
feel  conscious  of  abilities  and  features  he  does  not  possess.  It  is 
another  instance  of  the  deceit  of  the  senses. 

Change  your  silks  and  broadcloth  for  rags  and  your  con- 
sciousness undergoes  adjustment  to  the  change;  pride  is  replaced 
by  humility,  the  peacock  feels  as  the  worm  might  be  supposed 
to  if  aware  of  his  limitations. 

It  was  Jouffroy  who  held  that  we  know  our  body  only  ob- 
jectively as  an  extended  solid  mass,  similar  to  other  bodies  of  the 
universe  outside  the  ego  and  foreign  to  the  perceiving  subject, 
exactly  as  we  know  our  table  or  mantelpiece.  This  is  called 
self-consciousness. 

When  we  grow  accustomed  to  impressions  so  that  they  lose 
their  former  effect  a  readjustment  of  the  parts  concerned  in  the 
impression  must  have  occurred,  a  diffusion  of  the  vibrations  into 
other  and  more  general  channels  takes  place.  Muscles  visibly 
adapt  themselves  to  new  demands  by  growth  so  that  what  origi- 
nally may  have  required  severe  conscious  effort  can  be  uncon- 
sciously and  easily  performed.  Nerves  are  no  exception  to  the 
rule  of  tissue  increase  by  exercise.  The  miller  becomes  habit- 
uated to  the  noise  of  machinery  and  sleeps  undisturbed  by  it. 
The  rustic  excited  by  city  noises  may  become  accustomed  to  them 
in  time,  and  returning  to  the  quiet  of  the  country  be  disturbed 
by  it. 

An  idea  of  the  method  by  which  the  brain  may  receive  im- 
pressions can  be  gained  from  observation  of  the  process  of  tele- 


496  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

graphing.  The  clicks  which  make  the  dots  and  dashes  of  the 
Morse  code  when  grouped  in  certain  ways  stand  for  letters ;  thus 
two  dots  mean  i,  three  dots  mean  s,  four  dots  mean  h,  one  dash 
means  t,  two  dashes  mean  m,  three  dashes  five,  and  so  on.  By 
practice  the  words  formed  by  these  combined  clicks  are  under- 
stood as  readily  as  speech.  An  operator  may  be  fast  asleep,  and 
paying  no  attention  to  the  clicking  of  his  instrument ;  the  moment 
his  call  is  sounded  the  peculiar  grouping  of  the  clicks  will 
awaken  him  at  once,  as  readily  as  though  his  name  had  been 
called.^ 

Perception  conveys  the  idea  of  a  sense  impression  in  connec- 
tion with  memory  of  past  experiences,  and  apperception  is  essen- 
tially the  same  thing  as  the  union  of  a  new  with  past  impressions. 
Apprehension  is  practically  awareness. 

Memory  consists  of  memories  divided  into  what  has  been 
stored  up  in  the  brain  cells  by  the  senses  of  sight,  hearing,  etc., 
so  memory  has  no  special  seat  but  several  seats.  There  can  be  no 
sympathy,  joy  or  grief  when  memory  of  what  relates  to  those 
sentiments  has  been  taken  away.  For  example,  an  injury  to  the 
visual  centre  in  the  brain  made  a  patient  unable  to  recall  the  face 
of  a  friend  who  he  heard  was  dead,  but  he  was  surprised  to  find 
that  he  had  no  sorrow  when  told  of  the  loss  of  his  friend,  simply 
because,  as  far  as  sight  was  concerned,  he  could  not  recall  him. 

The  receptivity  of  the  young  for  memorizing  as  compared 
with  that  of  the  old  person  is  in  the  ratio  of  the  chemical  integrity 
of  the  brain  materials,  the  plastic  developing  youthful  brain  reg- 
isters easily  and  retains  what  the  denser  less  yielding  structures 
of  age  fail  to  record,  and  calcification  or  other  change  included 
under  hardening  may  be  observed  to  be  a  senile  method  of  invo- 
lution. 

The  events  of  youth  are  much  more  readily  recalled,  and  as 
we  grow  older  recent  happenings  do  not  impress  us  so  that  we 
can  as  readily  remember  them,  and  an  explanation  of  this  could 
be  that  in  youth  first  occurrences  make  profounder  impressions 
upon  the  sensorium  according  to  the  childish  estimate  of  their 
importance,  and  later  in  life  as  we  improve  in  our  judgment  mat- 

^  Studies  in  Telegraphic  Language,  W.  L.  Bryan  and  N.  Harter,  Psy- 
chological Review,  1897,  p.  27. 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  497 

ters  which  previously  seemed  unimportant  assume  new  aspects 
and  may  impress  us  enough  to  cause  them  to  be  recalled  from 
this  later  date.  A  vast  range  of  happenings  we  gradually  drop 
from  memory  as  useless  to  us  to  retain,  though  practically  they 
are  still  in  the  recollection  for  mere  reminder  suffices  to  cause 
them  to  be  recognized,  but  consciousness  is  habituated  to  them 
and  their  recurrence  is  unnoticed  through  the  rule  that  conscious- 
ness is  concerned  more  in  the  unfamiliar  and  that  which  necessi- 
tates effort,  the  blood  being  consumed  more  at  the  points  of  such 
activity  in  the  brain ;  these  events  that  pass  day  by  day  through 
familiarity  we  disregard,  and  as  age  routinizes  life  the  automatic 
responses  to  daily  needs  leave  the  mind  unengaged  by  compara- 
tively trivial  things,  and  there  is  more  time  and  inclination  for 
exercise  of  higher  intelligence  based  upon  retention  of  what  are 
really  important  affairs  or  what  the  experience,  habits,  education 
and  circumstances  cause  him  to  regard  as  important.  So  as  life 
is  measured  by  events  the  first  part  is  the  longer,  and  as  so  few 
new  things  seem  to  happen  in  age  that  period  is  apparently 
shorter ;  further  the  perceptions  in  youth  are  exercised  in  looking 
for  new  sensations,  and  hence  life  seems  full  of  experiences  then, 
whereas  age  is  reminiscent  and  ponders  past  matters  while  more 
obtuse  or  indifferent  to  the  present.  Then  with  a  well-stored 
brain  solitude  is  not  so  irksome  as  it  is  to  the  superficial  or  unde- 
veloped. Time  hangs  heavily  upon  the  idle-minded,  while  atten- 
tion and  interest  cause  time  to  pass  swiftly. 

Association  of  events  occurs  in  the  mind  through  seeing,  hear- 
ing, etc.,  them  together,  whether  such  things  have  any  relation 
to  each  other  or  not,  and  this  accounts  for  the  mysterious  and 
provoking  recalling  to  our  minds  of  things,  and  we  cannot  ac- 
count for  w^hy  they  should  have  come  back  to  us  at  that  time. 
It  is  simply  because  we  cannot  help  learning  two  or  more 
things  at  the  same  time.  Animals  and  savages  often  maintain 
the  original  multiple  impression  as  children  do.  As  the  trees  and 
grass  wave  and  a  storm  follows,  hence  these  crude  intellects  con- 
clude that  the  wind  and  storm  are  caused  by  the  grass  and  trees. 
It  is  a  common  savage  supposition  due  to  this  association.  A 
gambler  loses  at  cards  and  recalls  that  he  met  a  cross-eyed  man 
that  day  wdio  must  have  caused  his  losses.    The  sight  of  a  rose 


498  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

may  recall  its  odor,  or  its  smell  may  bring  the  flavor  to  memory. 
Even  the  thought  of  a  lemon  may  make  saliva  flow.  Many  in- 
structive movements  have  associated  impressions  in  memory  for 
their  causes.  When  the  sexes  are  not  appareled  as  usual  the 
unsuitable  dress  changes  regard  for  them,  the  customary  associa- 
tion is  disturbed.  Lingerie  attracts  the  eye  where  bloomers  dis- 
gust. A  modern  bonnet  on  a  statue  of  Venus  appears  ludicrous 
and  incongruous.  Mental  suggestion  is  a  form  of  association. 
False  association  is  a  mighty  influence  in  human  error,  and  oc- 
curs in  dreams,  delusions,  superstitions,  ignorance.  Cause  and 
eifect  are  constantly  misplaced. 

Imagination  is  an  exercise  of  memory  association,  by  which 
resemblances  and  unlikenesses  are  grouped.  Childhood  is  full  of 
fancy,  and  it  requires  long  experience  and  a  better  fund  of  mem- 
orized facts  before  imagination  can  be  properly  curbed  and  made 
useful.  Dogs,  cats,  horses,  birds  have  vivid  dreams,  hence  they 
have  imagination. 

Appreciation  of  beauty  exists  in  butterflies,  fishes,  reptiles, 
birds  and  mammals  as  they  are  attracted  by  colors  and  symmetry 
of  form  in  their  mating,  and  this  is  an  associative  and  imagina- 
tive exercise. 

Attention  may  be  reflex  or  involuntary,  but  it  is  thereby  that 
curiosity  is  exercised  and  learning  made  possible.  A  cat  watch- 
ing a  mouse  hole  is  an  instance  of  absorbed  attention,  so  intense 
that  one  may  approach  unawares.  Similarly  in  man  the  absorp- 
tion may  be  such  an  extreme  as  to  shut  out  sense  impressions  for 
other  matters,  due,  in  my  opinion,  to  the  nutrient  reflexes  being 
engaged  in  supplying  more  blood  to  the  brain  centres  exercised, 
at  the  expense  of  contiguous  or  distant  centres,  rendering  them 
less  acute. 

Curiosity  is  the  desire  to  know,  and  is  clearly  associated  with 
attention.  Some  dogs  are  more  attentive  than  others,  or  even 
than  some  monkeys,  but  attention  increases  in  the  scale  of  intel- 
ligence. 

Interest  is  an  associated  condition  of  attention,  and  may  make 
studies  delightful. 

Compared  with  other  mental  acts  volition  is  quite  simple.  It 
is  simply  the  final  act  which  gives  effectiveness  to  choice  or  which 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  499 

realizes  the  object  of  choice.  Unless  we  nicike  it  cover  every  im- 
pulse or  decision  of  the  will  from  attention  to  choice  it  will  only 
denote  the  final  initiating  force  of  physical  movement,  the  ex- 
ternal result  of  will  leading  to  the  realization  of  desire.  The  con- 
sciousness of  an  end  or  purpose  is  included  and  the  executive 
fiat.  The  will  may  be  considered  relatively  free  and  also  rela- 
tively bound,  but  as  everything  has  an  antecedent  cause  the  will 
is  absolutely  not  free,  and  may  be  regarded  as  merely  the  strong- 
est impulse,  the  acts  performed  being  due  to  a  resultant  of  forces 
in  which  consciousness  may  or  may  not  participate.  \Vill  power 
is  dependent  on  health  largely  and  is  merely  a  physical  manifes- 
tation. Anything  that  debilitates  and  irritates,  such  as  severe 
pruritus,  a  grief  or  other  distraction,  may  place  will  power  at  a 
disadvantage,  but  after  all  such  things  are  merely  part  of  what 
will  determine  will  power. 

The  will  power  is  weakened  or  destroyed  or  perverted  by 
alcohol,  through  its  deranging  the  inner  mechanism  and  substi- 
tuting unhealthy  for  healthy  impulses.  Aboulia,  or  will  paraly- 
sis, and  the  other  extreme  of  obstinacy,  show  that  will  power  is 
co-ordination  and  impulse,  either  failing  to  express  results  or  ex- 
erted improperly  and  too  much. 

In  the  insanity  of  doubt  the  vaso  motor  irregular  action  may 
be  conceived  as  occurring  in  certain  centres  between  the  recep- 
tion of  the  sensory  and  the  selection  of  the  efferent  outgoing 
motor  impulse,  the  blood  oscillating,  instead  of  going  direct  to 
the  part  concerned  in  the  usual  motor  projection  impulse,  may 
easily  cause  the  vacillation.  Stimulants  have  also  disposed  of 
this  trouble,  but  it  is  inadvisable  to  rely  upon  them,  for  they  sub- 
stitute pernicious  for  the  erratic  action. 

In  imitated  insanity  as  folie  a  doux  the  weak  mind  is  the  main 
factor,  such  persons  are  organically  defective.  The  weak  will 
of  the  imbecile  is  well  known ;  there  is  force  lacking. 

Thought  regards  the  relation  between  things  and  events.  Ap- 
prehension regards  facts  and  thought  their  relations.  Di.;crimi- 
nation  involves  attention,  selection  and  perception  of  differences. 
It  is  analysis. 

Abstraction  concentrates  upon  certain  qualities  and  neglects 
others.    Comparison  and  generalization  results.    Concrete  refers 


500  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  wholes.    Reason  or  reflection  utilizes  the  memories  of  events. 

Induction  is  the  hypothetical  process  of  reasoning,  leading  up 
to  conclusions,  examining  facts  and  making  temporary  inferences 
until  better  ones  can  be  made. 

Belief  does  not  mean  faith,  but  both  may  come  before  knowl- 
edge, as  conviction  before  proof.  Faith  trusts  with  or  without 
reason,  belief  accepts  or  assents  without  proof.  Belief  may  be 
founded  on  testimony  and  trust  in  a  person,  or  on  induction,  so  it 
may  represent  the  probable  in  various  degrees,  but  a  belief  is 
never  by  itself  proof  of  anything  except  that  the  person  is  con- 
vinced, even  if  he  die  for  his  belief.  Doubt  suspends  judgment 
for  want  of  evidence.  Science  teaches  us  that  it  is  not  necessary 
to  have  opinions  in  all  cases.  We  may  with  great  advantage  leave 
our  conclusions  a  ''scientific  blank."  It  is  the  most  ignorant  who 
always  has  an  infallible  opinion  on  every  subject,  particularly  if 
rich  or  powerful  enough  to  force  his  ideas  upon  others. 

Ideas  in  the  world's  history  have  survived  through  their  nat- 
ural selection,  such  ideas  as  were  fittest  to  persist  by  reason  of 
the  receptivity  of  the  people  for  them,  have  prevailed  and  flour- 
ished, sometimes  a  foolish  lying  idea  might  be  the  best  suited 
to  spread  and  be  enthusiastically  believed  in.  When  the  Arabs 
were  ripe  for  Mohammed's  teachings  they  gulped  them  and 
fought  to  sustain  them.  Many  an  idea  has  been  forced  upon  peo- 
ple by  the  sword,  and  the  next  generation  would  not  understand 
how  the  world  could  have  ever  thought  differently. 

Imitation  plays  a  strong  role  in  propagating  modes  of  thought 
which  the  masses  unthinkingly  or  unreasoningly  take  for  granted 
as  correct,  and,  everywhere,  what  the  children  are  taught  in  early 
life,  no  matter  how  silly  it  may  be,  throughout  life  remains  as  a 
fixed  influence  controlling  the  acts  of  the  adult  with  occasional 
rare  instances  of  overcoming  such  bondage  by  individual  reflec- 
tion or  change  of  environment,  seldom  through  the  development 
of  reasoning  power  alone  without  external  aid,  but  so  strong 
may  this  tendency  become  in  a  few  instances  that  older  training 
when  erroneous  has  given  way  to  reasoned  out  recognition  of  its 
absurdity,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  good  influences  have  also  been 
negatived  by  a  bad  life. 

Reason,  according  to  Herbert   Spencer,  affords  no  gap  be- 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  5OI 

tween  it  and  instinct,  for  rational  actions  pass  into  instinctive  and 
arise  from  instinctive  when  too  complex.  The  human  brain  is 
an  organized  register  of  infinitely  numerous  experiences  received 
during  the  evolution  of  life,  or  of  that  series  of  organisms 
through  which  the  human  organism  has  been  reached.  Then  it  is 
that  faculties  unknown  to  some  lower  races,  as  musical  ability, 
l)ecome  congenital,  or  are  born  into  the  higher  ones. 

There  is  wide  variance  in  the  ways  in  which  people  think,  ac- 
cording to  age,  station  in  life,  means  of  support,  anxieties  and 
thousands  of  other  influences,  to  say  nothing  of  the  degree  of  de- 
velopment of  the  brain.  There  are,  however,  certain  almost  in- 
variable methods  of  thought  resulting  from  commonly  found 
conditions,  such  as  the  humility  of  poverty,  the  arrogance  of 
riches  (with  exceptions  of  course,  I  merely  said  almost  in- 
variable). A  greater  development  of  mind  in  the  poverty- 
stricken  and  the  wealthy  would  raise  the  spirits  of  the  one  and 
tend  to  humiliate  the  other  in  realizing  that  there  is  something  in 
Emerson's  ''law  of  compensations."  The  poor  man  would  realize 
that  he  is  nearer  nature  and  can  rely  on  whatever  friend  he- 
makes.  The  rich  man  would  see  how  he  has  surrounded  himself 
with  those  who  would  surely  desert  him  if  he  lost  his  means ;  he 
would  know  how  sycophants,  intriguers,  quacks,  shysters,  swin- 
dlers and  hypocrites  are  attracted  to  him  as  the  carrion  attracts 
buzzards.  Unable  to  separate  the  true  from  the  false  were  he  to 
develop  intellect  enough  to  do  so,  he  would  be  appalled  at  the 
results  of  his  being  rich,  and  despise  the  fawners  and  flatterers 
who  in  his  previous  mental  state  he  regarded  as  his  best  friends, 
and  would  cultivate  an  entirely  different  class  of  neighbors  whom 
previously  he  looked  upon  with  indifference  or  disdain.  Greedy 
heirs  do  not  wait  upon  the  poor  man,  anxious  for  him  to  die ;  if 
people  call  upon  him  it  is  not  so  often  with  some  design. 

The  impossibility  of  awakening  the  public  to  an  advanced 
idea  of  its  highest  interests  is  shown  time  and  again.  The  eager 
reformer  can  demonstrate  that  much  good  to  the  community  and 
to  individuals  will  flow  from  a  certain  line  of  action,  but  the  pop- 
ulace is  busy  with  its  bread-winning,  and  turns  deaf  ears  to 
pleadings  for  concerted  action  in  things  it  fancies  but  remotely 
affects  them,  or  likely  enough  hearken  more  readily  to  designing 


502  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

and  ignorant  bigots  who  oppose  advanced  ideas. 

Harvey's  theory  of  the  circulation  of  the  blood,  though,  es- 
tablished by  the  most  convincing  proofs,  was  not  generally  re- 
ceived during  his  life-time,  and  his  practice  was  hurt  by  its  pub- 
lication. Sir  Charles  Bell  lost  many  consultations  when  he  pub- 
lished a  little  book  on  the  mechanism  of  the  human  hand. 

In  the  State  of  New  York  asylums  for  the  chronic  msane 
were  found  to  be  pernicious  and  were  abandoned  because  the 
politicians  availed  themselves  of  the  better  opportunities  they 
afforded  to  rob  the  helpless ;  "anything  was  good  enough  for  the 
incurables,"  and  the  expense  to  the  other  asylums  was  increased 
by  taking  away  dements  who  could  labor.  But  the  Illinois  poli- 
ticians induced  a  "woman's  club"  in  Peoria  to  start  a  petition  to 
have  an  asylum  there  for  the  incurable  insane,  and  one  was  built 
in  spite  of  the  records  against  such  a  system. 

Tasmanians  have  no  words  to  express  qualities  such  as  our 
words  hard  or  tall,  but  have  to  resort  to  comparisons  "like  a 
stone,"  or  "long  legs."  As  mental  powers  develop  the  language 
becomes  less  pictorial  and  more  abstract,  and  thought  evolution 
is  thereby  quickened,  but  it  is  a  question  if  this  change  of  terms 
does  not  still  accompany  the  same  old  methods  of  thought,  com- 
parison, for  we  may  say  hard  and  yet  think  "like  a  stone,"  and 
tall  is  still  long  legs  in  our  thoughts.  The  Tasmanians  name 
particular  varieties  of  trees,  but  have  no  name  for  tree.  The  red 
men  have  no  general  term  for  oak-tree,  the  different  varieties 
being  named.  According  to  the  needs  of  peoples  apparent  gener- 
alizations may  grow,  but  they  are  really  concrete  in  all  cases- 
Generalizing  is  more  a  memory  widening,  filling  it  with  more  pic- 
tures of  similar  things  classed  under  one  prominent  type  which 
stands  for  all. 

The  capable  lawyer,  oefore  trymg  a  suit  at  law,  will  study  the 
environment  all  he  can;  he  prefers  to  know  the  judge,  the  law- 
yers, the  jury,  and  even  get  a  glance  at  the  court-room  before 
beginning,  for  all  these  details  count  in  the  result.  And  a  lec- 
turer will  consider  to  whom  he  is  speaking.  The  tactless  will 
write  or  lecture  or  plead  without  regard  to  the  requirements  or 
the  fitness  of  things,  and  this  sort  of  absence  of  foresight  reacts 
upon  one's  efforts. 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  503 

Small  official  minds  delight  in  embarrassing  operations  of  a 
government  department  by  some,  far-reaching  ruling  that  will 
inconvenience  thousands  and  cause  vast  sums  of  money  to  be  lost, 
and  all  wholly  unnecessary,  merely  to  show  authority,  as  the  pea- 
cock flaunts  his  tail.  For  weeks  there  was  an  instruction  to  the 
effect  that  writing  "printed  matter  only"  on  the  outside  of  a 
newspaper  or  book  to  be  mailed  placed  it  among  written  commu- 
nications liable  to  full  letter  postage.  The  insurrection  this  rul- 
ing caused  ended  in  its  speedy  abolition,  but  lilliput  intellects 
are  busy  with  similar  interferences,  fearful  that  their  originators 
may  not  attract  attention. 

"Knowledge  is  power  and  wealth"  is  an  old  saw,  and  its  verity 
depends  largely  on  who  has  the  knowledge  and  what  kind  it  is, 
and  what  one  considers  wealth,  for  the  greatest  knowledge  at- 
tained may  induce  its  possessor  to  abstain  from  either  power  or 
wealth,  as  usually  understood,  the  knowledge  alone  being  the 
greatest  wealth  and  conferring  happiness  that  completes  the  de- 
sires of  life. 

Judgment  cannot  be  a  faculty,  it  can  only  be  a  condition  of 
different  faculties  and  good  or  bad,  according  to  the  states  of  the 
faculties.  Nevertheless  it  appears  to  be  a  general  condition  de- 
veloped in  some  and  more  or  less  absent  in  others.  It  does  not 
appear  in  any  animals  or  man  until  a  certain  accumulation  of 
facts  is  made  which  requires  a  stage  of  development  beyond 
youth.  Usually  it  is  better  in  the  aged  person  and  poor  in  the 
child.  Some  develop  it  earlier  than  others,  and  it  varies  greatly 
in  individuals.  It  is  the  same  as  inference,  deduction  and  logic. 
It  is  arrived  at  by  a  process  of  induction  from  the  accumulation 
of  facts  registered  in  the  brain  during  a  lifetime.  Something 
may  interfere  with  the  full  exercise  of  all  the  judgment  of  which 
a  person  is  capable,  and  hence  an  expression  of  judgment  may 
be  erroneous  or  insufficient  through  only  a  portion  of  the  facts 
being  used  in  an  inference. 

An  instance  of  judgment  exercise  may  be  seen  in  the  case  of 
an  old  general  with  much  experience  and  reading  advising  the 
younger  officers  in  his  command  against  a  certain  rash  move- 
ment.   He  recollects  the  disadvantages  from  similar  moves,  and 


504  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

therefore  judgment   depends  largely  upon  memory   and  ability 
to  make  comparisons  (reasoning)   more  or  less  promptly. 

The  reason  why  the  judgment  of  a  man  of  sixty  years  is  ripe 
is  because  by  that  time  he  is  most  apt  to  be  free  from  thousands 
of  previous  false  views;  his  accumulation  of  experience  enable 
his  comparisons  to  be  more  accurate,  and  hence  he  sees  life  more 
nearly  as  it  really  is,  and  can  infer  better  in  consequence.  The 
natural  conservatism,  however,  may  deter  the  old  man  from  a 
venture  in  which  the  recklessness  of  youth  might  succeed,  but 
the  counsel  of  the  old  is  safer  in  the  end. 

Ignorance,  bias  or  prejudging  are  matters  so  related  that,  for 
our  purposes  they  may  be  readily  included  in  a  consideration  of 
prejudice,  formed  from  pre  and  judice,  and  one  of  the  few  words 
that  well  convey  their  meaning.  Knowledge  is  relative,  no  one 
has  adequate  information  on  all  subjects.  Some  are  more  ig- 
norant than  others,  but  the  most  ignorant  of  all  is  the  one  who 
is  too  ignorant  to  know  how  ignorant  he  is.  One  may  be  well 
informed  in  certain  lines,  say  of  business,  or  of  a  profession,  and 
have  the  reputation  of  being  intelligent  and  well  educated.  Alas ! 
along  comes  a  sharper,  skilled  in  other  lines  than  those  with 
which  the  ''intelligent,  well  educated  man,"  is  familiar,  and  he 
is  swindled.  He  may  even  gulp  body-destroying  and  mind-de- 
bauching morphine,  cocaine,  and  acetanelid  medicines,  because 
they  were  advertized  by  unscrupulous  quacks,  and  as  for  ''spir- 
itual" matters,  what  will  not  the  "intelligent,  well  educated"  per- 
son believe  in? 

Nations  may  be  prejudiced  against  one  another  through  mu- 
tual ignorance,  existing  for  generations.  Creeds  and  political 
parties  provoke  misunderstandings  which,  as  time  elapses,  appear 
absurd.  When  one  is  brought  up  to  believe  a  party,  a  nation, 
or  a  religion,  to  be  radically  wrong  the  childish  inference  is  also 
made  that  everyone  connected  therewith  is  bad.  To  realize  that 
*'no  man  or  measure  is  ever  wholly  right  or  wholly  wrong"  re- 
quires a  thoughtfulness  and  experiences  more  than  those  of  the 
average  adult. 

The  most  learned  is  often  unable  to  buy  books.  So  the  means 
of  obtaining  judgment  do  not  ensure  it  in  all  cases,  obviously  so 
when  we  see  so  many  dunces  graduating  from  universities.    The 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES. 


505 


■quantity  of  acquirement  does  not  measure  the  quantity  of  insight, 
nor  do  wisdom  and  information  vary  together.  When  facts  are 
unorganized  knowledge  is  a  burden. 

One  great  difficulty  in  weighing  evidence  and  drawing  infer- 
-ences  from  the  simplest  array  of  facts  comes  from  the  easily  ob- 
served failure  of  listeners  to  retain  in  their  minds  the  first  parts 
of  a  lesson  or  discourse  before  they  reach  the  last  parts,  and  so 
they  do  not  connect,  associate  or  group  the  different  parts,  though 
they  admit  the  truth  of  each  statement.  Reviewers,  even  if  they 
take  the  trouble  to  cut  the  leaves  or  to  try  to  understand  a  book, 
which  is  not  too  often,  usually  state  things  unfairly  through  ina- 
iDility  to  grasp  matters  in  all  their  relations.  Holmes  spoke  of 
critics  as  being  made  from  chips  left  over  from  the  making  of 
authors. 

The  untrained  constantly  pervert  evidence  by  putting  down 
as  perceived  what  is  merely  conclusion.  They  are  often  unable 
to  tell  the  objective  from  the  subjective,  what  they  have  seen  or 
lieard  from  what  they  have  merely  thought. 

Excited  feelings  make  us  wrongly  estimate  probabilities  and 
destroy  our  view  of  relative  importance. 

Holmes  defined  a  pseudo-science,  such  as  phrenology,  ''as  a 
nomenclature  with  self-adjusting  arrangements  by  which  all  posi- 
tive evidence,  or  such  as  favors  its  doctrines,  is  admitted  and  all 
negative  evidence,  or  such  as  tells  against  it  is  excluded.  It  is 
invariably  connected  with  some  lucrative  practical  application. 
Its  professors  and  practitioners  are  usually  shrewd  people;  they 
are  very  serious  with  the  public,  but  wink  and  laugh  a  great  deal 
among  themselves.  The  believing  multitudes  consist  of  women 
of  both  sexes,  poetical  optimists,  people  who  always  get  cheated 
in  buying  horses,  philanthropists  who  insist  on  hurrying  the  mil- 
lenium  and  others  of  this  class,  here  and  there  a  clergyman,  least 
frequently  a  lawyer,  very  rarely  a  physician,  and  almost  never  a 
liorse  jockey  or  a  member  of  the  detective  pplice.  A.  pseudo- 
science  does  not  necessarily  consist  wholly  of  lies,  and  it  may 
contain  many  truths,  and  even  valuable  ones.  The  rotten  est  bank 
starts  with  a  little  specie.  It  puts  out  a  thousand  promises  to  pay 
on  the  strength  of  a  single  dollar,  but  the  dollar  is  very  commonly 
a  good  one." 


506  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

As  to  the  outcry  against  demolishing  idols  of  any  kind,  wheth- 
er of  pseudo-sciences  or  of  a  superstition,  Holmes  goes  on  to 
say :  "There  isn't  a  thing  that  was  ever  said  or  done  in  Boston, 
from  pitching  the  tea  overboard  to  the  last  ecclesiastical  lie  it 
tore  into  tatters  and  flung  into  the  dock,  that  wasn't  thought  in- 
delicate by  sQme  fool  or  tyrant  or  bigot,  and  all  the  entrails  of 
commercial  and  spiritual  conservatism  are  twisted  into  colics  as 
often  as  the  revolutionary  brain  of  ours  has  a  fit  of  thinking  come 
over  it." 

The  disposition  of  those  who  play  upon  the  emotions  and  de- 
mand recognition  as  an  authority  on  all  subjects  is  noted  in  the 
remark  by  Holmes,  that :  "Jo^^  Wesley  meddled  with  medi- 
cines, as  many  other  ministers  have  done,  sometimes  well  and 
sometimes  ill,  owing  to  their  very  loose  way  of  admitting  evi- 
dence as  seen  in  their  certificates  to  patent  medicines." 

Carlyle  holds  that  popular  opinion  is  the  greatest  lie  on  earth. 
While  this  is  a  too  hasty  summing  up,  it  can  be  truthfully  said 
that  it  is  very  often  superficial. 

The  attention  of  the  world  was  directed  toward  the  Dreyfus 
case,  and  the  indignation  aroused  indicated  how  very  little  idea 
there  was  extant  that  millions  of  even  worse  conspiracies  had 
succeeded,  and  history  often  was  in  the  dark  concerning  them, 
or  condemned  the  innocent  and  applauded  the  guilty. 

John  Fiske,^  speaking  of  the  persecuting  spirit  not  yet  having 
ceased  to  influence  men's  actions,  says  that  it  is  no  longer  re- 
garded as  a  trait  to  be  proud  of,  but  seeks  to  hide  itself  under 
specious  disguises.  Its  manifestations,  too,  have  become  corre- 
spondingly feeble.  The  heretic  who  once  would  have  been  racked, 
thumb-screwed  and  burned  for  writing  an  obnoxious  life  of  Jesus 
is  now  only  requested  to  resign  his  professorship  in  the  college 
de  France,  while  nobody  thinks  of  confiscating  the  book  or  cut- 
ting off  from  the  author  his  share  of  the  proceeds  of  its  immense 
sale.  The  decline  of  persecution  is  in  these  respects  analogous 
to  the  simultaneous  decline  in  the  warlike  spirit.  Warfare,  once 
regarded  as  the  only  fitting  occupation  for  well-bred  men,  has 
come  to  be  looked  upon  not  only  as  an  intolerable  nuisance,  but 
even  as  a  criminal  business,  save  when  justified  on  the  ground  of 

'  Excursions  of  An  Evolutionist,  p.  212. 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  507 

self-defence.  And  along  with  the  former  slaughter  of  captives 
it  is  now  unfair  to  kill  chickens  of  an  enemy's  country  without 
at  least  professing  to  pay  for  them.  There  are  improvements  in 
the  way  people  think  and  feel.  Buckle  claimed  the  race  had  not 
improved  morally  but  intellectually;  he  thought  this  progress 
was  due  to  increase  in  knowledge  and  not  at  all  to  improvement 
in  ethical  feeling.  He  notes  that  religious  persecution  has  been 
the  product  of  some  of  the  best  impulses  of  human  nature  when 
guided  by  an  erroneous  theory  of  duty.  The  wretched  Com- 
modus  cared  nothing  for  religion,  but  Marcus  had  the  interest  of 
religion  uppermost,  and  in  spite  of  a  humane  disposition  used 
violence  to  suppress  the  heresy  of  Christianity.  The  possession 
of  an  exclusive  dogma  of  salvation  makes  persecutors.  If  you 
have  sole  ownership  of  the  right  to  heaven  it  is  a  kindness  to 
torture  or  even  kill  your  neighbor  to  save  his  soul. 

The  sword  is  no  longer  in  the  equipment  of  a  gentleman, 
private  warfare  is  no  longer  allowed,  the  duel  is  less  in  favor 
and  the  sportsman  is  being  hedged  with  rules.  A  sort  of  femi- 
nine softness  is  coming  over  the  people  as  they  shrink  from  the 
disagreeable.  He  is  so  merciful  to  himself  that  he  could  not  bear 
to  hear  of  an  insane  person  being  kicked  to  death  in  an  asylum, 
and  hopes  some  one  will  do  something  about  it.  He  even  shrinks 
from  seeing  cattle  slaughtered  by,  the  butcher,  but  his  imagination 
is  not  exercised  in  vain  regrets  when  he  eats  what  the  butcher  has 
killed  for  him. 

The  slave-making  desire  is  observable  in  the  attempt  to  domi- 
neer over  persons  intellectually  in  asserting  the  correctness  of 
one's  own  opinion  over  all  others'.  Children  squabble  over  ques- 
tions of  no  consequence  and  warm  into  calling  each  other  hard 
names,  and  finally  pound  each  other. 

We  may  safely  infer  from  the  tenacity  of  the  ignorant  to 
.whatever  notion  it  may  have  acquired  as  the  only  correct  one, 
and  his  readiness  to  destroy  you  for  doubting  that  opinion,  that 
lowly  organized  men  whether  aborigines,  savages,  Russian  mou- 
jiks,  Spanish  peasantry,  or  the  uninformed  in  the  neglected  parts 
of  great  cities  have  an  inborn,  inherited  disposition  to  act  upon 
their  convictions,  however  obtained,  and  to  resent  any  attempt 
to  call  such  convictions  into  question.    From  this  it  may  be  seen 


508  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

how  priestcraft  and  demagoguery  work  so  successfully;  either 
the  opinions  are  instilled  beforehand  and  adroitly  made  use  of 
by  the  designing  or  they  are  hammered  into  the  passive  people 
incapable  of  thinking  for  themselves.  In  either  event  the  tribe, 
band,  society,  church,  etc.,  may  fight  to  maintain  whatever  opin- 
ion is  adopted,  and  dislike  opponents  as  the  savage  does,  and 
for  identical  reasons.  His  conceit  is  wounded  by  any  intimation 
that  he  is  not  a  god.  Even  the  scientific  man  flushes  with  resent- 
ment when  his  pet  theories  are  scoffed  at.  He  has  been  known  to 
resort  to  revenge  upon  his  adversary  for  refusing  to  quote  him. 
A  compiler  of  medical  works  went  over  a  revision  of  a  large 
periodically  published  volume  and  carefully  expunged  the  names 
of  all  confreres  who  refused  to  worship  at  his  shrine  and  laud 
him  for  abilities  he  did  not  possess. 

A  man  with  small  knowledge  of  chemistry  found  gold  with 
antimony  and  concluded  that  the  antimony  had  been  converted 
into  gold.  He  advertised  to  sell  stock  in  his  process  to  enable  him 
to  buy  antimony,  and  finally  fled  when  he  discovered  his  error. 
Any  chemist  could  have  told  him  of  his  mistake,  but  he  would 
not  listen  to  one,  nor  did  the  stockholders  think  of  consulting 
a  chemist  before  investing.  If  his  claim  was  a  fact  and  his 
process  the  correct  one  gold  could  have  been  manufactured. 

But  even  those  who  spend  a  lifetime  in  the  study  of  a  subject 
may  overlook  some  important  fact  or  show  bad  judgment.  The 
crude  mind  on  this  becoming  known  jumps  to  the  conclusion  that 
there  is  nothing  in  science.  Experts  sometimes  lie,  and  the  aver- 
age juryman  thinks  therefore  that  all  experts  do  so,  and  it  would 
he  best  to  have  ignorance  only  to  trust.  Ignorance  is  most  often 
as  untrustworthy,  and  the  cause  of  expert  lying  in  the  court  is 
not  traced  to  its  real  source,  the  fact  that  liars  mainly  are  the 
fittest  to  survive  in  such  service  because  the  lawyers,  the  judge 
and  the  law  proceedings  suppress  truth,  all  too  often,  the  wit- 
ness is  sworn  to  tell  "the  truth,  the  whole  truth  and  nothing  but 
the  truth,"  and  forthwith  the  lawyers  on  both  sides  extract  from 
him  only  what  colors  their  particular  side  and  prevent  him  from 
telling  the  whole  truth  and  the  judge  sustains  their  methods  and 
would  fine  the  witness  for  contempt  or  send  him  to  jail  if  he  in- 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES. 


509 


sisted  upon  telling  the  whole  truth.  And  lawyers  do  not  always 
care  to  have  a  too  truthful  witness. 

Life  itself  may  be  said  to  be  a  process  of  problem  solving, 
and  the  more  logically  the  body  adapts  itself  to  the  environment 
the  better  the  health  and  happiness,  and  if  the  brain  is  developed 
to  enable  the  better  adjustment  then  that  organ  but  continues  the 
process  that  the  body  of  the  lowest  organism  more  or  less  im- 
perfectly attempts.  Nature  defeats  the  solution  of  the  life  prob- 
lem by  death,  so  the  best  solution  possible  is  the  possible  one  for 
the  highest  developed  brain  to  do  the  best  it  can  with  life.  And 
various  are  the  interpretations  of  this  from  living  wholly  for 
one's  self  to  living  wholly  for  others.  The  logic  of  life  is  com- 
pound, as  the  conditions  are  so  many  and  so  complex ;  no  set  of 
syllogisms  can  serve  as  the  logic  of  life.  The  body  assumes  that 
an  article  is  fit  to  eat  and  a  mistake  may  cost  sickness  or  loss  of 
life,  so  it  has  to  secure  true  premises  in  such  matters,  for  the 
second  and  third  terms  will  be  impossible,  for  instance:  poison 
is  assumed  as  good  to  eat,  arsenic  is  poison  and  the  rat  ate  some. 
If  the  rat  had  time  to  draw  any  inference  it  would  be  that  he  was 
mistaken  in  his  premise.  The  fact  of  the  matter  is  the  best  part 
of  logic  is  in  securing  truthful  data  to  start  with,  and  all  the 
other  processes  can  pretty  well  take  care  of  themselves.  Science 
or  the  better  knowledge  of  things  affords  the  best  means  of  secur- 
ing correct  premises,  in  spite  of  so  many  methods  being  false 
sciences. 

Induction,  deduction  and  consistency  have  all  a  basis  of  fact 
or  they  are  worthless. 

The  brain  is  most  often  a  wretched  problem  solver,  for  it  too 
often  puts  the  cart  before  the  horse.  A  sudden  emotion  is  stirred 
and  consciousness  becomes  aware  of  it,  and  the  mind  inverts  the 
order. 

Belief  is  often  absurdly  considered  to  be  proof.  The  senile 
dement  believes  in  the  scoundrel  who  robs  him,  the  betrayed 
woman  believed  in  her  betrayer,  the  man  who  believed  the  gun 
was  not  loaded  blew  his  brains  out.  Spain  believed  it  could  whip 
America,  the  Mohammedans  believe  they  will  convert  and  control 
the  earth. 

Conditions  are  incessantly  being  mistaken  for  things.    That  is 


5IO  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

when  a  man  jumps,  the  jump  as  well  as  the  man  is  considered  to 
be  a  solid  tangible  affair.  It  is  difficult  for  people  to  realize  that 
sound,  heat,  light,  electricity,  motion  in  general,  taste,  smell, 
touch,  gravity,  chemical  power  and  so  on,  are  mere  jumps,  that 
modes  of  motion  are  not  things  but  conditions  of  things.  When 
this  sort  of  elementary  physics  once  gets  into  the  brains  of  biolo- 
gists, doctors,  philosophers  and  others  they  have  taken  great 
strides  toward  knowing  a  little  about  the  universe.  As  people  do 
not  know  the  horse  from  the  kick,  they  have  trouble  in  correct 
reasoning. 

The  subject-matter  of  logic  is  no  part  of  a  logical  system ; 
that  is,  the  things  dealt  Vith  are  merely  the  materials  used  for 
the  time  being  by  the  system.  Logic  may  be  regarded  as  the 
simple  reasoning  process  by  which  we  pass  from  truth  to  truth, 
already  found,  and  by  which  we  guard  against  false  arguments 
in  such  a  passage.  It  has  nothing  to  do  with  words  but  the  ar- 
rangement of  words  into  propositions  and  arguments ;  not  with 
their  meanings,  but  with  the  process  of  reasoning  or  passing  from 
two  known  and  acknowledged  judgments  to  a  third  which  is  de- 
rived from  their  combination. 

It  is  argued  that  since  men  reason,  and  reason  well,  without 
rules  and  without  knowing  the  process,  that  a  system  of  rules 
must  be  unnecessary.  Many  children  speak  with  correctness  and 
precision  before  they  have  any  knowledge  of  grammar,  and  there 
are  persons  with  wonderful  arithmetical  ability  who  have  never 
learned  arithmetic,  good  musicians  who  do  not  know  the  notes, 
but  grammar,  arithmetic  and  musical  rules  are  not  to  be  con- 
demned because  there  are  a  few  who  do  not  need  them. 

''Many  persons  of  clear  perceptive  faculties,  and  who  form  and 
combine  their  judgments  rapidly,  may  reason  acutely  and  well 
without  a  system  of  rules,  but  in  order  to  be  certain  of  their  cor- 
rectness others  must  have  some  invariable  test ;  on  the  other  hand 
there  are  many  of  quick  but  erratic  minds  who  reason  with  such 
dangerous  sophistry  that  the  most  delicate  logical  tests  can  expose 
the  fallacy  of  which,  indeed,  they  may  not  themselves  be  entirely 
aware.  As  such  delicate  tests  have  not  been  within  the  reach  of 
the  multitude  it  is  thus  that  men  have  become,  for  want  of  pop- 
ular knowledge  of  logic,  at  once  self-deceivers,  and  deluders  of 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  5II 

mankind,  have  established  illogical  religious  creeds,  monstrous 
social  fallacies,  false  theories  of  government,  which  are  imme- 
diately made  manifest  by  the  simple  application  of  logic/'* 

The  bias  of  prejudice,  distortion  of  passion,  or  insidious  temp- 
tation into  error,  swaying  of  self-interest,  partisanship,  fashion, 
imagination,  cause  ordinarily  clear  minds  to  draw  different  con- 
clusions from  the  same  premises.  At  different  periods  of  life 
men  will  reason  differently,  so  it  is  evident  that  natural  logic  is 
an  insufficient  guide  to  reason.  But  by  observing  all  these  things 
that  iitfluence  reason  and  trying  to  conceal  them  enables  us  to 
avoid  much  false  reasoning. 

There  can  be  but  one  kind  of  logic  applicable  to  all  matters ; 
thus  a  good  mathematician  applies  logic  to  the  investigation  of 
numbers  and  quality,  a  good  general  logically  grasps  a  situation, 
•etc. 

Methods  of  investigation  are  by  analysis,  taking  apart,  or 
synthesis,  putting  together.  In  studying  nature  we  first  describe 
things,  and  then  experiment  with  them,  to  see  what  things  do ; 
these  stages  are  called  the  descriptive  and  the  inductive :  then 
follows  the  deductive  or  exact  stage,  that  of  devising  some  sort 
of  conclusion  or  opinion  with  regard  to  things  and  what  they  do. 

When  we  learn  about  things  the  next  step  is  to  collect  them 
and  their  workings  into  general  laws,  and  deduce  from  these 
things  and  how  they  behave  further  instances,  or  consequences, 
or  predictions;  this  process  is  the  descriptive,  inductive  and  de- 
ductive. 

One  logician  demands  that  we  believe  nothing  without  proof, 
which  is  a  safe  enough  rule  if  we  could  always  prove  things. 
Many  things  we  have  to  take  on  trust  from  statements  of  others, 
and  we  do  not  always  find  our  confidence  misplaced,  but  we  can 
make  a  distinction  between  direct  and  indirect  testimony  and  be- 
lief founded  on  satisfactory  evidence  or  on  mere  hearsay. 

The  avoidance  of  ambiguity  is  one  of  the  most  important  rules 
of  logic.  Be  sure  you  understand  your  subject  before  you  can 
expect  to  make  clear  inferences  from  it.  Never  use  a  word  you 
do  not  fully  understand  and  avoid  those  likely  to  mislead.  If  you 
get  into  the  bamboozling  habit  and  are  content  to  merely  appear 

^  Elements  of  Logic,  Henry  Copee. 


512  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  know  things  you  will  end  by  cheating  yourself,  blinding  your 
reason  and  by  thinking  lies. 

Reasoning  consists  in  the  combination  of  two  known  judg- 
ments to  form  a  third,  and  when  expressed  in  language  is  called 
argument. 

The  simplest  form  of  argument  is  the  syllogism,  but  in  an  ex- 
tended sense  reasoning  combines  many  arguments. 

An  essential  definition  presents  the  principal  parts  of  the  es- 
sence of  the  thing  defined,  as  a  steamboat  is  something  that  con- 
sists of  hull,  engine,  etc.,  this  being  a  physical  essential  definition,, 
the  logical  essential  definition  would  be  the  genus  as  an  ocean- 
vessel  and  differentiation  of  pecuHar  build. 

A  nominal  definition  gives  the  meaning  of  the  term  tele- 
scope to  view  far  off,  photograph  a  picture  made  by  light. 

A  real  definition  would  require  a  treatise  of  description  of 
what  is  to  be  defined. 

As  words  are  only  symbols  having  no  exact  equivalents  in 
phenomena,  it  is  evident  that  a  precise  definition  is  impossible, 
only  approximate  definitions  can  be  constructed.  Any  definition 
is  assailable,  and  vast  labor  and  time  has  been  wasted  in  attempts 
to  define  such  things  as  sanity,  insanity,  sickness,  health,  etc. 

A  definition  should  seek  clearness,  adequacy,  sufficiency  of 
words. 

Physical  division  is  separation  into  parts  as  an  oak  into  trunk, 
branches,  and  those  into  bark,  leaves,  etc.  Logical  division  sepa- 
rates genus  into  species  and  these  into  individuals.  Mankind  can 
be  divided  into  races,  creeds,  nations. 

A  fallacy  is  an  invalid  argument  which  appears  at  first  sight 
to  be  valid.  If  used  with  intent  to  deceive  the  fallacy  is  a 
sophism. 

There  are  fallacies  in  dictione  and  extra  dictionem,  fallacies 
of  form  or  diction  and  in  the  subject  matter. 

Material  or  non-logical  fallacies  arise  from  the  ambiguity  of 
words,  and  are  therefore  called  verbal  fallacies,  and  that  very 
designation  is  capable  of  misunderstanding  between  fallacies  of 
materials  and  a  fallacy  that  is  important  or  material.  Formal  fal- 
lacies are  undistributed  middle  terms,  illicit  process  of  either 
term,   negative  premises,   affirmative  conclusions  from  negative 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  5^3 

premises,  or  vice  versa,  more  than  those  terms  in  the  argument. 

Material  or  informal  fallacies  have  conclusions  that  are  cor- 
rect from  the  premises,  but  the  ambiguity  or  falsity  of  the  mate- 
rials dealt  with  in  the  premises  and  conclusions  is  to  blame  for 
these  kind  of  fallacies. 

The  simplest  division  of  material  fallacies  are  into  those  hav- 
ing errors  in  the  premises  or  in  the  conclusions. 

Errors  in  the  premises  are  technically  named  the  petitio  prin- 
cipii,  or  begging  the  question;  arguing  in  a  circle;  non  causa 
pro  causa,  or  the  assignment  of  a  false  or  undue  cause.  These 
branch  into  minor  divisions.  All  these  grow  out  of  false  or 
undue  assumption  of  premises;  they  are  akin  to  each  other,  and 
are  often  confused. 

I.  Petitio  principii :  Using  the  same  fact,  in  other  words  to 
support  a  conclusion,  as  morphine  causes  sleep  because  it  is  a 
narcotic,  equal  to  saying  that  morphine  causes  sleep  because  it 
causes  sleep.  Languages  with  many  synonyms  abound  in  this 
fallacy. 

II.  Arguing  in  a  circle  is  finding  a  premise  to  prove  an  as- 
serted conclusion,  and  then  when  asked  for  proof,  trying  to  make 
the  conclusion  prove  the  premise,  or  increasing  the  circle  by  a 
third  proposition  which  depends  upon  the  conclusion,  and  jug- 
gling with  these  as  with  balls,  one  of  which  is  in  the  air,  but  which 
it  is  difficult  to  tell.  Working  out  the  syllogism  detects  the  fal- 
lacy. 

Mohammed's  revelations  are  true. 
The  Koran  is  Mohammed's  revelation. 
Therefore  the  Koran  is  true. 

III.  Non  causa  pro  causa :  Here  the  reason  or  cause  as- 
serted in  the  premises  have  nothing  to  do  with  the  conclusion. 
Assigning  a  cause  when  it  is  not,  and  secondly,  the  assumed  pre- 
mises cannot  be  proven  to  be  true  as  a  cause,  and  may  therefore  be 
considered  false. 

"Think  you  not,"  said  Charles  II.  to  Milton,  "that  the  crime 
which  you  committed  against  my  father  must  have  been  very 
great,  seeing  that  heaven  has  seen  fit  to  punish  it  by  such  severe 
loss  as  that  which  you  have  sustained?"  "Nay,  sire,"  Milton  re- 
plied, ''if  my  crime  on  that  account  be  adjudged  great,  how  much 


514  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

greater  must  have  been  the  criminaHty  of  your  father,  seeing  that 
I  have  only  lost  my  eyes,  but  he  his  head  ?" 

Eclipses  are  regarded  by  the  ignorant  as  portending  war  and 
famine,  and  when  they  happen  to  come  together  they  are  related 
as  cause  and  effect.  This  is  the  post  hoc  ergo  propter  hoc  fal- 
lacy that  besets  undisciplined  minds  and  induces  them  to  ascribe 
a  cure  to  a  patent  medicine  when  they  know  nothing  of  diseases, 
cures  or  remedies. 

Errors  may  lie  in  the  conclusion,  as  Alfred  the  Great  was  a 
scholar  because  he  founded  the  University  of  Oxford,  when  all 
that  could  be  affirmed  would  be  that  he  was  a  patron  of  learning. 

Polemics  contain  much  of  this  self-deceiving  and  deceiving 
others.  A  species  of  this  is  the  argumentum  ad  hominem  or  the 
unfair  appeal  to  personal  opinions  or  to  one's  vanity  or  prejudice. 
The  argument  may  close  with  ''Well,  you  would  not  do  so !"  The 
argumentum  ad  populum  is  the  appeal  to  popular  prejudice. 
Demagogues  use  this  fallacy  constantly,  and  where  the  sophistry 
is  evident  to  an  educated  mind  the  mob  is  delighted  with  its  un- 
reasonableness. Revolutions  often  proceed  on  these  lines.  A 
third  kind  of  irrelevant  conclusion  is  the  argumentum  ad  vere- 
cundiam  or  appeal  to  the  modesty  of  our  opponent,  hoping  that 
he  will  not  attack  respected  authorities  and  time-honored  cus- 
toms, enabling  conservatism  to  become  gross,  obstinate  error. 

Sterne  suggests  also  the  argumentum  ad  baculinum  or  argu- 
ment of  the  club,  in  ''Tristram  Shandy,"  and  a  ferociously  power- 
ful argument  it  has  been  in  the  world.  It  has  torn  down  and  es- 
tablished nations  and,  as  Darwin  says,  it  has  instituted  such  things 
as  virtue. 

Appeals  to  the  nature  of  the  thing  itself  and  to  individual 
judgment  are  legitimate,  but  changing  the  point  in  dispute  is  an 
argumentative  trick  and  some  contest  may  resolve  itself  into  prov- 
ing something  that  no  one  has  denied. 

The  fallacy  of  objections  consists  in  asserting,  for  example, 
that  since  there  are  objections  to  science,  that  science  is  false.  Ir- 
relevant conclusions  are  the  standing  sophisms  of  debate  and  leg- 
islative contest.  One  person  will  wander  about  in  a  discussion, 
another  will  lose  the  point  in  question,  another  is  taken  up  with 
little  details  with  no  bearing  on  the  subject,  and  a  third  mistakes 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  515 

the  fine  and  delicate  points  of  the  argument,  some  become  angry 
and  lose  reason  and  temper  together,  or  overpowered  by  the  truth 
and  logic  opponents,  appeals  to  prejudices  and  interests  of  their 
audience;  others  resort  to  ridicule  of  the  person  or  cause.  The 
master  mind  seeks  to  bring  things  back  to  the  main  issue  and  to 
confine  them  there. 

Verbal  fallacies — ambiguous  or  equivocal  meanings  of  words 
— a  line  for  instance  is  a  cord,  a  few  words,  a  military  term ;  a  por- 
ter is  a  drink  and  a  gate-keeper. 

I.  Etymology.  Words  change  in  their  meanings  from  one 
period  to  another. 

II.  Fallacy  of  Interrogations.  Using  two  or  more  terms  In 
a  question  that  requires  two  distinct  answers,  the  ambiguity  being 
in  the  single  answer.  One  question  implies  another.  Thus  a  tem- 
perate man  may  be  asked  when  he  gave  up.  drinking,  implies  that 
he  drank.  It  is  called  fallacia  plurimum  interrogationum,  is  made 
more  subtle  by  the  number  and  closeness  of  resemblance  of  the 
points  included  in  the  sentence. 

III.  Amphibolous  Sentences.  The  ambiguity  lies  in  the  con- 
struction, so  that  by  different  punctuations  we  have  double  and 
opposite  meanings.  The  Delphian  oracles  cultivated  this  knav- 
ery, so  that  whatever  happened  they  could  claim  to  have  pre- 
dicted it. 

The  wicked  flee  when  no  man  pursueth,  but  the  righteous  is  as 
brave  as  a  lion,  has  been  remodeled  by  placing  commas  after  the 
words  flee,  and  righteous,  omitting  the  one  after  pursueth  and 
changing  flee  to  flea. 

Tossing  meanings  from  one  sentence  or  word  to  another  is 
amphibolous. 

Words  may  have  two  or  more  meanings  by  resemblance, 
ambiguity,  analogy,  association,  ellipsis,  accident,  as  dove-tail, 
arm-chair,  sweet  sound,  good  shot  (as  a  person  or  article  or 
effect),  we  speak  of  Scott  when  we  mean  his  works  or  his  person. 
The  word  light  is  opposed  to  heavy  and  dark  and  may  in  con- 
duct be  applied  to  the  opposite  of  serious  or  dignified.  Ambigu- 
ity may  lie  in  the  context.  Playing  upon  the  words  nothing  and 
nowhere  used  as  adjectives  enable  another  fallacy  of  composition. 


5l6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

No  cat  has  two  tails,  every  cat  has  one  tail  more  than  no  cat,  every 
cat  has  three  tails. 

To  remove  ambiguity  demand  definitions — even  a  nominal 
definition  will  answer. 

Sweeping  generalizations  are  fallacious  and  so  are  the  uses 
often  made  of  probabilities,  which  are  taken  as  certain,  and  losses 
are  occasioned  in  gambling  by  a  wrong  use  of  the  matter  of  prob- 
able chances. 

Popular  fallacies  may  pervade  vast  numbers  of  people  from 
which  it  is  treason  to  dissent.  Error  may  pervade  an  age  which 
the  next  age  may  remove,  false  principles  cling  to  the  masses 
which  the  philosopher  observes  but  cannot  change.  Irrelevant 
conclusions  are  often  of  this  nature. 

I.  Among  common  popular  fallacies  is  that  which  forbids 
anything  but  good  to  be  said  of  the  dead.  One  means  of  fostering 
this  is  the  superstition  that  the  dead,  no  matter  how  unworthy, 
may  do  the  living  a  favor.    De  mortis  nil  nisi  bonum. 

''The  same  man,"  says  Jeremy  Bentham,"who  by  praising  you 
when  dead  would  have  plagued  you  without  mercy  when  living." 
A  dead  man  cannot  be  a  rival.  Rivalry  is  stronger  among  ac- 
quaintances. 

II.  De  gustibus  non  est  disputandum  is  used  to  stop  con- 
troversy by  indicating  that  different  views  need  not  be  reconciled. 
Each  has  his  own  taste.  Standards  may  be  secured  to  which  both 
may  agree. 

III.  Patriotic  prejudice.  That  of  assuming  one's  own  par- 
ticular government  as  the  best.  The  Russian,  Englishman  and 
American  knows  he  has  the  best  government.  Utopian  schemes 
of  government  show  how  absurd  "nature  menders"  become. 

Governments  are  often  suited  to  the  people  who  endure  them,, 
a  despot  is  needed  for  barbarians  and  a  republic  may  exist  among 
the  higher  civilized  classes. 

IV.  Sweeping  classifications: 

"The  crimes  of  kings,"  meaning  Louis  XVI.,  while  he  was  the 
best  of  them. 

"The  cruelties  of  the  Catholics." 

"Protestant  intolerance,"  during  James  II.'s  time. 


THE    INTELLECTUAL    FACULTIES.  517 

V.  No  precedent  argument,  and  as  there  was  no  complaint 
it  must  be  good. 

VI.  Diversion  to  personalities,  laudation,  abuse,  etc. 

VII.  Party  compulsion,  to  follow  a  leader  merely  because  he 
is  of  your  political  party.    Right  or  wrong  fallacy. 

Those  who  dare  think  for  themselves  and  protest  are  turn- 
coats, traitors,  fickle,  unreliable. 

Self  interest  and  not  truth  is  the  aim  and  slavery  results. 

Copee  says  :  "Birds  fly ;  this  is  true  of  birds  universally,  and 
we  have  the  right  to  prefix  the  sign  all,  which  denotes  it  an  uni- 
versal proposition." 

Showing  that  a  logician  may  be  a  poor  naturalist  and  that 
the  logical  mind  does  not  impart  abilit}'  to  recognize  facts,  un- 
known previously.  The  apteryx,  the  dodo,  penguin,  emu  and 
ostrich  are  birds  that  do  not  fly. 

Greeneaf,  on  ''Evidence,"  remarks  that  webbed  feet  are  evi- 
dence that  a  bird  is  aquatic,  unaware  that  the  webbed  foot  Pekin 
duck  drowns  if  it  gets  in  water  and  dislikes  to  have  its  feet  wet. 

One,  it  is  said,  preferred  to  be  right  than  consistent.  "Con- 
sistency is  Truth,"  says  Edgar  A.  Poe,  but  we  have  to  use  care 
about  consistency,  for  it  changes  as  truth  does  sometimes.  He 
regards  the  deductive  as  a  priori  and  the  inductive  as 
a  posteriori  methods  of  reasoning  and  in  suggesting  that  the  syl- 
logism is  not  the  only  means  of  ascertaining  truth  and  recom- 
mending the  test  of  consistency  as  the  only  one,  Poe  says  the  syl- 
logism crawls  while  the  consistency  test  flies.  "Because  the  tor- 
toise is  sure  of  foot  for  this  reason  must  we  clip  the  wings  of  the 
eagle." 

Axioms  do  not  exist,  he  contends,  because  there  is  no  ultimate 
knowledge. 

The  commonest  blunder  is  accepting  some  as  all,  the  next 
most  frequent  is  false  association,  and  the  worst  of  all  is  blindly 
accepting  "authority."  . 


CHAPTER  XVI. 
MENTAL  DISEASES. 

Condensing  from  the  chapters  on  causes  and  pathology  in  my 
Medical  Jurisprudence  of  Insanity,  the  main  factor  in  insanity  is 
in  a  constitutional  taint,  the  mental  machinery  may  be  said  to  be 
rickety,  so  that  comparatively  little  things  put  it  out  of  gear,  such 
as  troubles,  worry,  excitement,  some  bodily  diseases  and  even 
child  birth  or  the  development  crises  of  puberty  and  age.  Al- 
cohol and  heredity  are  the  main  causes  usually  in  connection  with 
other  matters.  Diseases  may  be  severe  enough  of  themselves  to 
induce  insanity.  Perverted  circulation  as  when  the  blood  current 
is  too  slow  or  too  fast  may  set  up  depressed  or  exalted  states,  the 
cramping  of  blood  vessels  in  different  parts  occasion  hysterical 
symptoms  and  in  epilepsy  the  circulation  is  badly  disturbed.  In- 
terference by  cornpression  which  cuts  off  the  blood  supply  to  brain 
parts  produces  various  mental  and  bodily  defects.  Auto-toxaemias 
the  retention  in  the  system  of  effete  materials  accounts  for  neural- 
gias, melancholias,  delirium,  hysteria  and  the  furies  of  insanity 
generally.  Brain  deformities,  as  in  idiocy,  or  after  an  injury  to 
the  head,  or  a  disease,  such  as  scarlatina,  often  profoundly  modify 
the  brain  workings.  Nutritional  faults  are  the  general  results  of 
all  these  causes. 

Alcohol  poisons  the  blood  and  nervous  systems,  which  regulate 
mental  and  physical  adjustment  of  means  to  ends.  Man  is  not 
the  only  alcohol-drinking  animal.  Chickens  and  ducks  can  be- 
come addicted  to  liquor  and  neglect  food  for  its  sake.  Buffon 
tells  of  a  wine-drinking  chimpanzee  and  Brehm  of  mandrils  that 
regularly  drank  wine.  Decayed  fruit  may  cause  cattle  to  become 
drunk,  oxen  and  cows  have  been  seen  drunk  in  orchards;  they 
stagger,  and  grow  sleepy.  Animals  are  susceptible  to  drunken- 
ness in  proportion  to  their  intelligence.  Elephants  are  fond  of 
liquor  of  all  kinds  and  rats  gnaw  the  staves  of  casks  to  get  at  the 

518 


MENTAL    DISEASES. 


519 


contents.  Cats  do  not  seem  so  much  inclined  to  drink  alcoholics. 
The  parrot  is  a  prime  toper.  Swarms  of  bees  have  become  help- 
lessl}'  drunk  on  the  poisonous  linden  nectar,  and  fishes  have  be- 
come suicidally  drunk  from  alcohol  in  their  water. 

The  entire  animal  kingdom  has  suspiciousness  and  apprehen- 
sion as  a  fixed  instinct,  stronger  in  some  species  than  in  others, 
stronger  in  some  races  than  in  others  according  to  localities  and 
what  the  people  had  to  combat  or  to  fear.  Dread,  care,  apprehen- 
sion are  human  heritages,  modified  by  circumstances,  always  ready 
to  develop  if  occasion  demands,  or  if  the  mind  fails  to  correct  un- 
pleasant sensations  sufficiently.  Habit  can  intensify  apprehen- 
sion. Incessant  worry  about  the  future  makes  dwelling  upon  pos- 
sible misfortune  a  normal  average  state.  Age  may  intensify  these 
fears  and  the  dissolution  of  the  normal  relations  of  the  intellect 
caused  by  insanity  may  further  increase  dread  into  delusions  of 
persecution  owing  to  the  mental  integrity  being  absent  that  for- 
merly corrected  these  feelings. 

Some  persons  seem  to  be  naturally  suspicious,  as  Beethoven, 
who,  though  continuing  to  compose  music,  grew  more  suspicious 
as  his  deafness  increased.  In  such  cases  the  difficulty  of  under- 
standing what  was  going  on  about  him  contributed  to  the  appre- 
hension, while  a  normal  mind  becomes  reconciled  to  deafness. 

Suggestion  to  the  mind  seems  to  be  the  starting  point  of  many 
delusions.  The  cold  legs  due  to  a  bad  circulation  may  suggest 
to  the  hypochondriac  that  his  legs  are  made  of  glass.  The  catalep- 
tic muscular  tension  of  katatonia  suggests  to  the  mind  the  stagy 
behavior,  just  as  a  good  circulation  suggests  vigor,  hopefulness 
and  cheeriness.  Visceral  states  may  involuntarily  awaken  emo- 
tions and  even  motor  reflexes.  If  the  heart  starts  to  beat  very 
rapidly  by  some  mechanical  nervous  and  vascular  cause,  which 
at  the  same  time  disables  the  mind  from  recognizing  the  mere 
fact  as  being  caused  in  some  unknown  way,  then  the  enfeebled  in- 
tellect assumes  the  readiest  explanation  at  hand,  that  of  being 
persecuted,  or  bewitched,  or  electrified,  etc. 

In  some  logically  insane  there  are  spots  of  gray  matter 
out  of  place  in  the  brain,  with  inevitable  erratic  reflexes  or  be- 
havior different  from  that  of  ordinary  persons.  There  is  a  ten- 
dency in  some  of  these  to  seek  the  meaning  of  signs,  omens,  sym- 


520  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

bols ;  they  are  mystics,  and  attach  importance  to  many  silly  simple 
affairs.  One  at  the  county  insane  asylum  studied  the  engravings 
on  dry  goods  labels  and  assigned  mysterious  importance  to  scroll 
work.  This  mysticism  appears  like  a  reversion  to  primitive  sav- 
age states  of  mind  when  the  heavens  and  earth  were  full  of  mys- 
tery and  things  to  fear  and  to  propitiate.  This  inclination  to 
mysticism  or  to  interpret  symbols  foolishly  belongs  to  a  certain 
stage  of  brain  development,  that  of  the  age  of  the  race  corres- 
ponding to  childishness.  Most  superstition  originated  in  the 
childish  periods  of  races.  Inclination  to  mystery  is  in  every  child 
and  sometimes  is  not  outgrown,  attracting  those  who  take  ad- 
vantage of  such  simple-minded  persons. 

The  cause  of  marital  infidelity  delusions  of  the  alcoholic  is  that 
his  lowered  mentality  at  the  time  disables  him  from  judging  by 
his  later  acquired  intelligence;  he  goes  back  thousands  of  years 
in  ideas  and  thinks  as  the  pirate  and  savage  of  old  did.  This  is 
the  best  possible  interpretation  of  the  extremely  common  asser- 
tion of  alcoholic  insane  persons  that  their  wives  were  unfaithful 
to  them.  In  some  cases  of  recovery,  which  does  not  occur  often, 
these  patients  have  denied  any  recollection  of  such  accusations. 

D'clusions  that  parts  of  the  body  are  gone  could  ari3e  from 
loss  of  sensation  in  such  parts. 

Delusions  of  being  two  persons  could  occur  when  the  person 
had  an  hallucination  of  seeing  himself  walking  about,  while  he 
at  the  same  time  realized  that  he  was  also  in  bed.  The  touch 
cense  was  sane,  but  the  optic  affected. 

Suspicion  being  a  characteristic  of  all  wild  animals,  it  also 
appears  in  many  diseases  of  the  mind,  such  as  melancholia,  phthis- 
ical insanity,  paranoia,  hysterical  insanity,  whose  special  intelli- 
gence integrity  does  not  control  the  generalized  basic  emotions. 
The  delusion  of  persecution  is  the  natural  consequence  of  mil- 
lions of  years  of  hostile  surroundings,  in  savage  and  animal  inher- 
itances. The  depressed  feeling,  apprehensions,  etc.,  so  natural  in 
sickness  and  even  in  ordinary  health  to  most  persons  due  to  this 
"organic  memory"  of  past  remote  ages,  when  enemies  were  to  be 
evaded  or  fought.  Delusions  of  grandeur  in  destructive  brain 
diseases  come  from  blunted  ability  to  feel  pain,  fatigue  or  care,  a 
sort  of  mental  anaesthesia  and  the  rapid  oxygenation  of  mania 


MENTAL    DISEASES.  52  I 

like  a  stage  of  alcoholic  intoxication  also  imparts  a  similar  feeling 
of  well-being.  The  poisoned  circulation  fully  accounts  for  the 
misery  of  melancholia  and  the  enfeebl'ed  intellect  misinterprets 
the  causes  of  the  discomfort. 

The  feeling  of  unworthiness  that  is  merely  exaggerated  in 
melancholia  is  normal  in  many  otherwise  sane  persons  and  has 
in  all  likelihood  come  down  to  them  naturally  from  oppressed 
ancestry.  Many  extra  meek  people  act  as  though  nothing  was 
their  due ;  timidity  seems  born  in  them,  a  race  of  beggars  or  slaves 
could  transmit  such  feelings.  One  feels  in  the  way,  must  not 
oversleep,  must  not  bathe  for  fear  some  one  else  might  need  the 
bathing  room,  must  not  eat  too  much,  for  others  might  want  it. 
A  slave  idea  may  have  thus  come  dDwn  through  abuse  of  one's 
ancestry. 

Illusions  are  misconstrued  perceptions  comparable  to  the  sub- 
stitution of  one  word  for  another,  metaphasia,  paraphasia,  the 
wrong  reflex  being  excited,  so  the  wrong  imagery  or  sound  may 
be  recalled  in  illusions,  or  the  wrong  causes  may  be  assigned  to 
the  impression.  In  hallucinations  the  brain  memory  centres  are 
excited  by  some  internal  cause,  in  illusions  the  cause  is  merely 
misinterpreted. 

Optical  illusions  are  numerous,  confusing  past  with  present 
appearances,  immediate  sensory  data  with  residua  of  past  expe- 
riences, subjective  with  objective,  and  the  remembered  with  the 
actual,  dreams  with  wakmg  experiences. 

Life  is  full  of  illusions  of  all  the  senses,  beyond  such  things 
as  rainbows,  moon-dogs  and  sun-dogs,  one  of  which  founded  the 
story  of  the  Constantine  apparition.  The  perspective  is  an  il- 
lusion, and  comets  are  mere  sun  reflections  upon  aggregations  of 
meteorites,  and  astronomers  are  slow  to  accept  the  simplest  ex- 
planation of  such  things,  just  as  Galileo's,  Copernicus'  and  Kep- 
ler's ideas  were  rejected  by  the  star  observers  of  their  day. 

Hallucinations  and  illusions  as  in  dreams  are  invoked  memo- 
ries without  the  ability  to  discriminate  between  the  real  and  false. 
Nightmare  and  dreams  generally  are  more  or  less  hallucinations 
or  illusions  ;  that  is,  baseless  or  misinterpreted  perceptions. 

Hallucinations  are  but  memories  aroused  subjectively  in  the 
absence  of  external  causes,  the  illusions  being  also    memories 


522  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

aroused  for  which  there  is  an  external,  objective,  but  mistaken, 
cause,  or  the  memory  mistakes  the  impression. 

The  hallucinations  of  delirium  are  associated  with  the  blood 
perversions  of  fever  causing  unwonted  imagery  and  brain  im- 
pressions generally. 

]\Iany  visceral  derangements,  temporary  or  permanent,  or- 
ganic or  functional,  suggest  emotional  states  to  the  mind,  peculiar- 
ly so  in  hypochondria  and  melancholia,  and  rapid  pulse  and  brain 
oxygenation  characterizes  mania.  The  volubility  and  excitement 
is  directly  due  to  interference  with  the  normal  visceral  functions, 
and  the  brain  is  the  last  organ  to  be  affected. 

Hallucinations  may  be  called  memories  which  by  their  vivid- 
ness may  be  mistaken  for  seosation.  Some  irritation  of  the  centre 
for  the  memory  is  involved.  In  illusions  the  wrong  memory  is 
roused,  a  sort  of  twisted  apperception;  the  present  arouses  the 
wrong  past  in  recollection.  So  in  a  disordered  brain  a  memory 
may  become  so  vivid  as  to  be  mistaken  for  a  reality. 


CHAPTER  XVII.  • 
CHARACTER. 

Those  who  try  to  know  the  hearts  and  read  the  faces  of  their 
fellow-men,  whether  from  sordid  or  better  motives,  often  find 
good  and  evil  so  mingled  as  to  upset  any  extreme  theory  of  hu- 
man actions.  No  matter  how  often  the  merchant  is  cheated  he 
may  feel  that  all  men  are  not  liars  and  thieves.  Nor  could  he 
conclude  from  the  many  honest  people  he  meets  that  all  men  are 
upright  by  nature.  Finding  also  that  many  whom  he  thought  to 
be  knaves  or  honest  turned  out  to  be  otherwise,  he  will,  if  he  is 
large-minded,  infer  that  there  are  no  off-hand  tests,  or,  if  he  is 
small  in  mind,  which  is  too  often  the  case,  he  is  more  apt  to  sus- 
pect all  to  be  deeply  selfish  and  fail  to  observe  the  frequent  proof 
of  the  very  reverse,  or  he  may  account  for  uprightness  as  due  to 
a  weak  mind.  And  seldom  does  he  include  himself  as  subject  to 
the  rules  he  may  apply  to  others. 

Then,  though  mercy  prompted  the  legal  maxim,  in  use  in 
English  speaking  countries,  that  ''all  men  are  to  be  considered 
innocent  until  proven  to  be  guilty,"  business  interests  could  not 
safely  regard  all  men  as  honest  till  proven  dishonest,  and  no  mat- 
ter what  pretense  is  made  the  busy  world  is  forced  to  hold  to  the 
reverse. 

From  such  facts  it  may  seem  that  a  science  of  character  could 
not  be  built  up,  but  new  methods  of  thinking  out  such  problems 
belong  to  this  century,  and  by  patient  and  proper  study  of  the 
brain  and  mind,  and  their  origin,  w^e  will  have  a  vastly  more  cor- 
rect knowledge  of  such  matters. 

"All  men  are  bad"  is  the  often  made  assertion  of  the  woman 
who  has  had  unfortunate  experiences,  but  the  one  happy  in  the 
possession  of  a  faithful  mate  smiles  at  the  statement  and  is  apt  to 
make  sweeping  inclusions  of  an  opposite  nature. 

A  cynic  looks  only  upon  the  evil  everywhere,  another  sees  only 

523 


524  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

good  abounding,  and  it  is  this  latter  person  who  is  rudely  shocked 
by  treachery  of  trusted  friends,  and  who  as  he  grows  old  may 
finally  develop  a  suspicion  of  everyone,  particularly  of  those  least 
deserving  it. 

Turning  from  the  pettiness  of  the  many  whom  we  daily  meet 
to  the  records  of  such  patriots  as  Washington,  Sobieski,  Garibaldi, 
and  such  self-sacrificing  enthusiasts  as  Xavier,  De  Smet,  John 
Brown,  and  hundreds  of  others  who  could  be  named,  as  placing 
themselves  at  naught  and  principles  as  foremost,  we  see  some- 
thing we  call  noble  in  human  nature  and  m.arvel  at  its  appearance 
in  a  world  apparently  based  upon  wholly  selfish  motives. 

Alexander  Pope  mentioned  the  "man  to  books  confined,  who 
from  his  study  rails  at  human  kind,"  and  between  this  and  the  too 
pleasant  views  of  the  optimist,  we  can  steer  a  middle  course  and 
find  much  to  admire,  as  well  as  much  to  regret,  in  the  composition 
of  our  fellow  men,  and  without  the  supercilious  complacency  of 
the  ''better-than-thou"  Pharisee,  we  can  not  only  forgive  others, 
but  learn  that  we  have  nothing  to  forgive  in  people  who  act  out 
their  natures. 

The  mystery  is  not  so  great  that  there  are  brutal  human  be- 
ings, but  whence  came  the  excellent,  the  good,  the  sincere,  the 
humane,  who  appear  sometimes  amidst  feudal,  piratical  and  other 
base  people?  We  know  of  mercenary  armies  laying  countries 
waste,  we  hear  of  rapine,  murder,  slavery,  cruelty,  and  of  nations 
of  liars,  but  have  we  such  characters  as  Freytag  pictured  in  his 
*'Soll  und  Haben"  of  the  merchant  who  kept  an  account  with  God 
and  passed  all  profits  to  the  credit  of  the  deity,  and  acted  as 
though  all  unfairness  with  his  fellow-men  would  be  punished. 

Each  can  recall  fairly  ideal  persons,  unselfish,  kindly,  honest, 
and  we  wonder  at  defects  in  their  make-up,  as  though  perfection 
in  all  things  were  possible.  Our  youthful  conceptions  are  badly 
deranged  by  discovering  that  there  are  such  things  as  "praying 
rogues  and  swearing  saints." 

In  making  just  estimates  of  character  individual  biographies 
are  seldom  of  use,  for  but  little  of  the  real  life  of  the  person  is 
recorded  therein,  while  they  contain  much  that  is  pure  error,  nor 
do  histories  of  nations  afford  us  much  beyond  royal  rascalities 
and  courtly  intrigues,  narrations  of  wolves  and  foxes  in  high 


CHARACTER. 


525 


places.  The  common  people  have  not,  till  recently,  been  studied 
very  much. 

It  is  beginning  to  be  realized  that  the  best  people  in  the  world 
are  very  often  those  of  whom  the  world  never  heard,  but  current 
reputations  as  we  find  them  in  print  may,  in  a  general  way,  be  just, 
and  it  is  not  necessary  to  imagine  that  all  things  are  not  what  they 
seem  to  be,  only  it  is  best  to  know  the  reasons  why  things  are  as 
they  are,  and  that  we  are  not  deceived  in  our  estimates,  and  to 
realize  that  changes  are  liable  to  occur  under  altered  circum- 
stances. 

Writers  such  as  Charles  Reade,  Charles  Dickens,  Tolstoy  and 
Ibsen  bind  up  much  acute  observation  of  human  nature  with  their 
narratives,  and  their  popularity  justifies  the  ''novel  with  a  pur- 
pose." Occasionally,  even  with  the  best  of  intentions,  a  Wilkie 
Collins  will  go  astray  in  portrayals  of  character,  and  so,  in  the 
main,  fiction,  though  founded  on  some  fact,  has  to  be  carefully 
and  charingly  accepted  as  biography  and  history. 

Those  who  made  personal  sacrifices  for  opinion's  sake  and 
what  they  considered  to  be  the  welfare  of  large  numbers  of  their 
fellow  beings,  usually  to  rescue  them  from  suffering,  whether  the 
suffering  was  in  this  world  or  expected  to  be  encountered  in  an- 
other world,  deserve  special  regard,  no  matter  how  mistaken  they 
were,  or  what  harm  they  may  have  done  unintentionally. 

Hall  Caine  did  not  overdraw  the  bigot  John  Storm  who  was 
willing  to  murder  the  one  he  loved  to  save  her  soul.  Storm  fol- 
lowed out  his  belief  logically  and  with  the  usual  apparently  incon- 
sistent result.  The  time-serving,  pompous  bishop  and  the  truck- 
ling hospital  officials  are  also  well  described.  Unforgiving,  hard, 
cruel,  grasping.  All  in  the  name  of  Christ. 

The  olden  so-called  sciences  or  philosophies  like  alchemy, 
magic,  and  so  on,  were  based  upon  the  desire  to  take  advantage 
of  the  people  in  various  ways,  to  control  and  rob  them  of  money 
or  time  or  life.  As  science  becomes  more  exact  a  desire  for 
learning  for  its  own  sake  is  substituted,  and  the  object  of 
study  ceases  to  be  base.  Finally  the  missionary  spirit  finds  in 
science  scope  for  its  fullest  exercise,  and  realizes  that  great  good 
to  multitudes  will  follow  from  patient  research,  and  its  application 


526  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

to  an  amelioration  of  human  conditions.  Nowhere  will  this  be 
more  evident  than  in  the  future  insane  asylum. 

Criminologists  investigate  the  lower  social  strata  for  stigmata 
of  degeneracy,  neglecting  the  respectable  who  places  himself 
above  the  law. 

Governor  Hazen  S.  Pingree  of  Michigan,  in  a  speech  to  the 
Nineteenth  Century  Club  in  New  York,  said : 

*'I  have  found  it  necessary,  and  continually  practiced  it,  to 
pull  the  screens  wide  open  in  front  of  every  man  who  was  doing 
dirty  work,  to  call  him  by  name,  and  show  up  his  schemes  in  the 
newspapers.  It  is  your  so-called  respectable  people  who  are  the 
most  dangerous.  Their  cloak  of  eminent  respectability  hides  them, 
and  people  hardly  believe  you  when  you  show  them  up,  especially 
when  they  are  church  members  or  carry  long  faces.  My  experi- 
ence is  that  those  who  stand  foremost  in  the  synagogue  and  utter 
long  prayers  of  a  Sunday  and  engage  the  rest  of  the  week  in 
bribing  aldermen  or  getting  up  stock  jobbing  schemes  to  defraud 
widows  and  orphans  are  the  most  dangerous  members  of  society. 
Good  municipal  government  is  impossible  while  valuable  fran- 
chises are  to  be  had  and  can  be  obtained  by  corrupt  use  of  money 
in  bribing  the  people's  servants.  The  people  must  be  kept  awake 
or  the  thief  slips  in." 

Between  the  two  social  extremes,  the  very  wealthy  and  the 
very  poor,  exists  a  multitude  of  workers,  many  of  whom  are  so 
routinized,  so  differentiated,  habituated  to  honest  methods  that 
a  proposal  to  better  their  fortunes  by  what  they  have  grown  to 
regard  as  dishonest  means  shocks  them  and  is  resented.  Though 
many  who  practice  such  means  would  be  surprised  that  they 
should  be  regarded  as  dishonest.  There  are  straightforward  toil- 
ers in  abundance  in  this  world  who  could  not  be  induced  to  depart 
from  honest  ways.  They  are  organized  by  habit,  heredity  and 
surroundings  and  would  be  most  unhappy  if  tempted  to  surrender 
their  customs.  Yet  these  are  the  same  Simians  from  whom  came 
the  cruel  and  rapacious,  showing  that  human  nature  is  capable 
of  wonderful  modifications  but  requires  long  periods  of  time. 
Nature  menders  expect  to  make  the  metamorphoses  in  a  few 
years  through  some  optimistic  system  built  upon  inducing  every 


CHARACTER.  527 

man  to  be  honest.  The  guillotine  would  have  to  be  set  to  work 
if  rapid  elimination  of  dishonesty  is  to  be  secured,  otherwise  there 
must  be  patient  waiting  for  the  effect  of  influences  operating 
through  thousands  of  years  before  radical  changes  can  be  effected, 
and  then  unforeseen  consequences  must  attend  such  modifications. 

It  is  a  common  supposition  that  intelligence  increases  morality. 
Buckle  shows  that  this  is  far  from  the  truth.  Intelligence  changes 
the  character  of  knaveries,  eliminating  the  vulgar  kind  and  substi- 
tuting the  refined.  .  An  unintelligent  man  is  apt  to  betray  his 
meanness  but  the  educated  one  has  learned  to  conceal  his  baseness, 
or  even  to  go  to  the  extreme  of  pretending  to  be  better  than  he 
is.  Ignorance  and  lowness  may  co-exist  but  the  one  is  not  neces- 
sary to  the  other,  for  we  find  well-meaning  ignorant  and  intelli- 
gent rascals.  Education  often  improves  the  means  for  low  natures. 
A  very  high  intelligence,  however,  is  apt  to  take  no  pleasure  in 
btaseness,  as  a  perverse  nature  is  blind  to  truths  intelligence  is  ca- 
pable of  appreciating.  The  higher  mind  sees  a  higher  expedi- 
ency. 

Fear  of  punishment  or  vengeance,  superstition,  sympathy,  the 
feeling  of  shame  and  of  honor  and  justice  make  many  a  character 
better.  As  ostracism  is  the  penalty  of  dishonor  at  times  the 
feeling  that  one  is  an  honorable  man  is  a  strong  deterrent  from 
doing  wrong. 

As  Schopenhauer  claims,  good  acts  have  as  incentives  self 
interest,  kept  in  the  background,  hope  of  reward,  the  desire  to 
help,  for  we  may  need  help  ourselves.  He  did  not  believe  in  a 
sense  of  duty,  but  it  exists,  nevertheless,  and  is  composed  of  all 
the  incentives  creating  motives  to  other  good  deeds. 

Goethe  said  a  man  may  use  his  reason  to  enable  him  to  be  more 
bestial  than  the  beast.  Bacon  had  a  fine  mind  but  was  a  scoundrel. 
A  person  may  have  weak  reasoning  and  yet  have  a  high  sense  of 
morality. 

Circumstances  and  education,  particularly  early  training,  may 
give  the  direction  to  character,  but  the  zest,  sincerity,  aggressive- 
ness, will  power,  energy  or  fierceness  as  well  as  their  absence, 
with  selfishness  or  unselfishness,  come  from  heredity  in  most 
cases.  While  stalwartism  mav  beget  it,  there  are  instances  of  fail- 


528  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

lire  to  do  so.  The  altruistic  Abraham  Lincoln  left  no  progeny  re- 
sembling him,  and  great  leaders  like  Cromwell  fail  to  transmit 
their  characteristics.  His  son  was  frightened  at  contemplating 
the  king  business  and  declined  the  job.  As  a  rule  the  degenerate 
sons  of  worthy  leaders  are  eager  to  grasp  the  power  of  their 
dead  father,  and  when  the  people  develop  intelligence  enough 
they  will  outgrow  hereditary  sovereignties. 

Laziness  and  industry  are  matters  of  body  and  brain,  ambition 
and  integrity.  A  listless  wealthy  person  is  an  invalid,  if  poor  he 
is  a  tramp,  as  inebriety  and  drunkenness  are  matters  of  cash. 

Nutrition  must  be  neither  in  excess  nor  defective,  for  when 
life  is  too  easy,  parasitism  or  sluggishness  may  occur.  If  too 
hard  then  faculties  may  be  starved.  Huxley  remarked  that  more 
genius  had  been  smothered  by  wealth  than  extinguished  by  pov- 
erty. Tropical  climates  tend  to  enervate  those  from  colder  regions. 
The  need  for  exertion  develops  the  highest  races  in  the  wintry 
countries.  Blaming  the  Corsican  far  his  passion  is  blaming  the 
sun.  Seneca  claimed  that  difficulties  strengthened  the  mind  as 
labor  does  the  body,  so  this  truism  had  early  recognition.  Long- 
fellow worded  it :  "In  this  world  one  must  be  either  anvil  or 
hammer"  and  a  board  of  trade  man  summed  up  the  fight  of  life 
in  :    **One  must  run  with  the  hares  or  chase  with  the  hounds." 

Interference  with  the  ability  to  repay  may  put  a  debtor  in  a 
false  light,  but  there  are  persons  with  constitutional  inability  to 
calculate  properly,  often  unduly  hopeful,  causing  spendthrift 
recklessness  and  debt  accumulation.  Thackeray  speaks  of  an 
English  type  of  gentleman  who  lives  without  work  by  sponging, 
usually,  however,  upon  lordlings  who  in  turn  sponged  from  the 
masses.  ''And  these  fleas  have  still  smaller  fleas  upon  their  backs 
to  bite  them."  Parasites  upon  parasites.  Intellect  merely  min- 
isters to  the  wants  and  demands  of  the  propensities,  and  without 
these  propensities  the  intellectual  powers  would  not  be  exerted 
at  all,  says  Clouston.  Then  biologically  the  brain  is  superim- 
posed upon  the  nervous  system  and  that  upon  the  muscular,  all 
of  which  are  to  facilitate  ingestion  and  excretion,  so  the  highest 
intellect  is  merely  an  appendage  to  the  intestine  and  most  lives 
prove  the  propriety  of  this  view.  Were  it  not  for  development 
radically  changing  characters  in  an  endlessly  modifiable  way  as 


CHARACTER. 


529 


Spencer  notes  we  would  be  puzzled  to  account  for  extreme  altru- 
ists like  Probasco  who  gave  away  his  all,  if  life  is  based  upon 
such  greediness  altogether. 

Roger  Williams,  who  died  in  1683,  gave  all  to  his  colony. 
His  son  wrote  that  had  he  been  a  covetous  man  most  of  the 
town  would  have  been  his  tenants.  We  call  those  great,  says 
Knowles,  his  biographer,  who  have  devoted  their  lives  to  some 
noble  cause  and  influenced  for  the  better  the  course  of  events. 
Measured  by  that  standard  Roger  Williams  deserves  a  high  niche 
in  the  temple  of  fame  among  reformers.  He  believed  in  reli- 
gious liberty  and  democratic  government  and  despised  puri- 
tanical starchiness,  pretense  and  humbug.  He  was  the  prophet 
of  complete  religious  toleration  in  America.  He  was  ''consci- 
entiously contentious,"  always  pleading  for  some  magnanimous 
idea,  some  charity,  against  some  wrong,  for  forbearance  toward. 
body  and  soul.  He  could  do  nothing  by  halves  and,  of  course, 
was  called  "presumptuous,  turbulent  and  seditious.''  Like  Vol- 
taire he  was  always  interfering  with  some  one's  vested  interest 
in  the  profits  of  wrongdoing  and  cursed  by  ignorance  and  greed 
for  helping  the  victims  of  church  and  state. 

Often  some  prominent  trait  will  obscure  all  other  charac- 
teristics and  w€  fail  to  observe  how  our  idols  are  made  of  clay, 
according  to  our  conventional  notions  we  prefer  to  think  one  is 
either  wholly  right  or  wholly  wrong.  Avicenna  of  Bokhara, 
among  innumerable  others,  the  celebrated  scholar  and  philoso- 
pher, was  as  devoted  to  wine  and  women  as  to  learning.  Daniel 
Webster  had  a  similar  character.  And,  by  the  way,  character 
is  often  one  thing  and  reputation  another,  the  latter  being  in 
most  cases  a  misfit.  Popular  opinion,  to  which  there  is  such 
deference,  is  that  of  the  class  to  which  the  person  belongs.  Pro- 
fessional or  business  men  are  guided  by  the  views  of  their  own 
vocations. 

Cope  classes  practical  types  of  mind,  under  the  groups  mer- 
cantile, literary  and  scientific.  The  first  accumulates  and  often 
deprives  others,  the  second  deals  with  the  manner  of  things. 
Symbols  are  its  instruments  and  these  may  be  mistaken  for 
things.  The  third  counts  wealth  in  ideas.  It  gives  away  its 
commodities  for  the  benefit  of  others  often  without  credit.     A 


530  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN'  AND    HIS    MIND. 

further  inclusion  of  these  may  be  into  intestinal,  sensual  and  rea- 
soning. The  viscera  do  not  deprive  other  body  parts  because 
they  cannot  eat  everything  themselves.  Literary  people  are 
pleased  with  jingle  of  poetry,  resounding  phrases,  bright  colors, 
music,  pictures. 

The  desire  for  wealth  is  based  directly  upon  the  hunger  de- 
sire and  the  money  making  ability  is  seen  in  many  imbeciles  who 
save  and  stint  themselves  for  the  mere  purpose  of  accumulating. 
Those  who  sink  every  sentiment  in  pursuit  of  money  are  prac- 
tically hypertrophied  intestines  or,  as  usually  known,  are  sharks. 
Achievement,  work  and  the  desire  to  exercise  power  may  be 
coupled  with  the  basic  instinct  and  how  unhappy  are  the  retired 
accumulators.  Thoughtful  people  resist  the  tendency  to  be 
arrogant  when  rich  and  servile  when  poctr.  Holmes  advises 
keeping  in  mind  that  you  are  only  an  atom  of  humanity  and 
have  neither  vice  nor  virtue  enough  to  cause  you  to  be  singled 
out  for  supernatural  favors  or  affliction.  Voltaire  remarks : 
"We  have  only  two  days  to  live,  it  is  not  worth  while  to  spend 
them  in  cringing  to  contemptible  rascals."  Character  is  often 
predetermined  by  inheritance  that  may  run  back  a  generation 
or  two  or  revert  to  the  remotest  of  savage  ancestry  by  some  fail- 
ure of  development  of  the  brain. 

A  characteristic  of  youth  is  the  readiness  with  which  things 
are  learned  at  that  time.  Age  increases  the  difficulty  of  learn- 
ing, but  the  experience  gained,  which,  after  all,  is  something 
learned,  ripens  the  judgment.  Youth  is  rash,  age  is  cautious, 
the  youth  is  a  spendthrift  while  the  ancient  is  often  a  miser. 
A  man  will  be  calculating,  emotional,  sincere,  treacherous,  frank, 
etc.,  as  a  summing  up  of  inheritance  and  enviro^nment  from 
thousands  of  years  before  he  was  born.    Holmes  says : 

''Each  of  us  is  only  the  footing  up  of  a  double  column  of 
figures  that  goes  back  to  the  first  pair.  Every  unit  tells  and 
some  of  them  are  plus,  and  some  minus.  If  the  columns  don't 
add  up  right,  it  is  commonly  because  we  can't  make  out  the 
figures.  I  don't  mean  to  say  that  something  may  not  be  added 
by  nature  to  make  up  for  losses  and  keep  the  race  to  its  aver- 
age, but  we  are  mainly  nothing  but  the  answer  to  a  long  sum 
in  addition  and  subtraction.     No  doubt  there  are  people  bom 


CHARACTER.  53 1 

with  impulses  a.t  every  possible  angle  to  the  parallels  of  nature, 
as  you  call  them.  If  they  happen  to  cut  these  at  right  angles 
of  course  they  are  beyond  the  reach  of  common  influences. 
Slight  obliquities  afe  what  we  have  most  to  do  with  in  educa- 
tion. Penitentiaries  and  insane  asylums  take  care  of  the  right 
angle  cases." 

Sancho  Panza  remarked:  "Man  is  as  God  made  him  and 
soxnetimes  a  great  deal  worse." 

"While  all  men  may  be  created  equal  they  don't  seem  to 
stay  so." 

Characters  are  divisible  into  ordinary  and  extraordinary,  any 
one  of  which  may  lack  symmetry  and  is  the  product  of  heredity 
and  circumstance  subject  to  the  modifications  of  age,  hardships, 
affluence,  disease,  or  drug  habits,  particularly  that  of  alcohol. 

The  waif  develops  the  foxy  nature  naturally  and  may  prey 
upon  the  community  that  neglected  him  in  youth. 

In  contemplating  an  appeal  to  the  public  to  investigate  and 
reform  a  bad  political  insane  asylum,  it  occurred  to  me  that  the 
public,  who  were  asked  to  do  so,  included  people  who  negle'ct 
their  servants,  merchants  who  boodle  by  selling  goods  to  public 
institutions  and  paying  politicians  a  portion  of  the  overcharge, 
also  ministers  who  thunder  against  sin  in  the  abstract  and  fear 
to  go  into  particulars  in  their  sermons,  for  boodlers  are  in  their 
congregation. 

No  aid  can  he  had  from  hotel  keepers  who  huddle  a  hun- 
dred girls  into  space  for  twenty,  in  hot  rooms,  with  no  transoms 
or  windows,  or  from  merchants  who  have  to  be  compelled  to 
give  their  saleswomen  seats  or  decent  accommodations  of  the 
most  ordinary  kind,  or  who  give  out  piece-work  shirts  at  starva- 
tion rates  per  dozen,  and  throw  a  lot  of  it  on  their  hands  and 
invent  excuses  to  rob  them,  nor  from  those  who  work  children 
under  age  and  rob  them  of  their  wages. 

If  character  can  be  chronologized  as  pertaining  to  certain 
periods  of  the  world,  then  such  a  man  as  the  Spanish  priest  de 
las  Casas  was  ages  ahead  of  his  time,  as  he  was  immeasurably 
above  his  people  in  sympathy  and  rectitude.  In  the  sixteenth 
century  he  denounced  slavery  of  the  Indians,  and  like  De  Smet, 
opposed  their  being  robbed  and  murdered.     But  we  more  fre- 


532  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

quently  find  the  spirit  of  the  middle  ages  earnestly  advising  a 
young  doctor  to  ''fake  it."  His  friends  tell  him :  ''You  will  be 
poor  if  honest,  people  like  to  be  humbugged."  Rarely  does  he 
hear  the  advice:  "Preserve  your  self-respect  at  all  costs."  An 
energetic  politician,  gambler  and  whisky  seller  is  adored  by  his 
family  and  immediate  friends  as  a  kind  and  indulgent  father 
and  generous,  considerate  friend,  and  yet  the  very  means  he  is 
thus  able  to  disburse  are  stolen  from  public  monies  appropriated 
for  the  poor-house  and  insane  asylum.  In  this  instance  the 
faithfulness  and  sympathy  extends  to  those  most  near,  and  not 
to  others,  particularly  strange  families  or  the  rest  of  the  com- 
munity. It  is  a  stage  of  development  in  which  multitudes  still 
remain,  a  survival  from  worse  than  barbarous  days.  The  tribal 
sympathy  has  not  appeared  that  will  enable  the  man  to  fancy 
suffering  in  the  abstract  or  care  for  it  in  strangers.  He  can 
despoil  others  to  enable  him  to  be  "generous,"  and  a  good  family 
provider. 

It  is  reported  that  some  fashionable  clubs  have  developed  a 
mania  for  tattooing.  This  is  a  natural  stage  of  savagery  and 
among  criminals  and  degenerates,  just  as  insanity  may  be  the 
approach  to  idiocy  of  too  much  luxury  and  release  frc^m'  brain 
exercise  in  some  of  these  same  club  members.  In  the'  lower 
organisms  parasitism  takes  away  useless  organs  such  as  brains, 
arms,  legs,  eyes  and  so  on,  when  the  parasite  gets  his  sustenance 
without  exertion;  The  rule  applies  to  man,  as  well,  to  a  great 
extent.  An  old  Spanish  proverb  has  it :  "Give  your  son  a 
fortune  and  throw  him  in  the  sea." 

The  child  copies  the  world's  mental  development  in  earlier 
communities,  as  in  lying,  stealing,  organizing  pirate  and  bandit 
expeditions,  loving  excitement  and  play,  in  being  mischievous, 
cruel  and  greedy.  Some  adults  remain  undeveloped  beyond 
certain  of  these  stages,  as  the  mischief-miaker,  the  cruel  horse- 
play practical  joker,  the  liar,  the  thief,  and  the  unscrupulous 
boodler  who,  by  robbery,  directly  and  indirectly,  causes  the  death 
of  many  sick  and  poor,  to  enable  him  to  be  good  to  his  own 
family  and  friends. 

I  know  an  instance  of  habitual  treachery  in  a  young  man, 
who  was  pardoned  time  and  again  by  his  employer,"  but  who 


CHARACTER.  533 

could  not  resist  a  chance  to  repeat  his  ungrateful,  underhanded 
attempts,  to  injure  his  employer  to  secure  an  advantage  for  him- 
self. Women  are  specifically  sympathetic  but  not  so  in  the 
abstract  as  a  rule.  Their  imaginations  do  not  permit  them  to 
realize  strangers  suffering.  Sympathy  is  first  aroused  by  expe- 
rience, next  in  imagining  others'  suft'ering  as  we  did,  and  finally 
this  feeling  extends  beyond  those  nearest  to  us.  Eddyism  de- 
stroys sympathy  in  denying  that  there  is  such  a  thing  as  pain, 
hence  the  reversion  of  the  members  of  that  cult  to  idiots.  Beau- 
ties are  more  apt  to  be  fickle  because  they  realize  that  their 
charms  are  merchantable  and  they  do  not  have  to  accept  the 
first  bid. 

When  the  wealthy  invite  celebrities  to  their  parties,  it  is  usu- 
ally to  exhibit  their  ability  to  buy  the  curiosity,  to  excite  the  envy 
of  rivals.  Dr.  Sam  Johnson,  in  his  immortal  letter  to  Lord 
Chesterfield,  asks  if  a  patron  is  not  one  who  looks  with  uncon- 
cern on  a  man  struggling  for  life  in  the  water,  and  when  he  has 
reached  ground  incumbers  him  with  help?  Schopenhauer  points 
to  rogues  being  mutually  attracted  and  base  natures  find  so  much 
in  common  with  others  that  they  are  never  at  a  loss  for  com- 
pany. La  Rochefoucauld  said  it  was  difficult  to  feel  deep  venera- 
tion and  great  affection  for  one  and  the  same  person.  That 
familiarity  breeds  contempt  is  an  old  but  proven  rule.  The  only 
way  to  attain  superiority  is  to  be  independent  of  everyone.  No 
one  is  a  hero  to  his  valet  and  families  underrate  their  own 
members. 

In  the  Introduction  to  Robert  Chambers'  "Vestiges  of  the 
Natural  History  of  Creation,"  Henry  Morley  says  that  to  un- 
derstand a  man  fully  we  must  know  all  that  he  did  and  why  each 
thing  was  done,  how  the  surroundings  of  his  life  affected  tone 
and  thought  or  action,  what  in  each  instance  determined  action 
and  what  was  his  age,  at  every  stage  of  life,  for  the  wisdom  of 
a  man  of  thirty-five  may  be  the  folly  of  a  man  of  seventy. 

You  cannot  know  a  man  unless  shipwrecked  with  him  or  till 
you  have  seen  him  become  rich.  One  who  in  poverty  was  agree- 
able in  prosperity  was  otherwise.  Every  man  may  have  his 
price,  but  sentiment  may  be  the  price  of  some,  not  sentimentality, 
which  is  a  different  thing.    Many  sincere  persons  look  to  another 


534  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

world  for  their  price  and  many  natures  are  so  habituated  to  hug 
their  principles  that  nothing  on  earth  could  ever  take  them  away 
but  death. 

Conceit  may  cause  a  man  to  live  up  to  what  the  world  expects 
of  him  and  he  may  do  right  always  for  that  reason.  Vicissitudes 
have  developed  character  as  it  has  nations. 

The  character  and  teachings  of  Christ,  freed  from  the  inter- 
pretations of  the  designing,  just  as  the  simple  people  understand 
them,  appeal  to  the  heart  if  there  is  any  good  therein.  Even  if 
these  teachings  have  antedated  Christianity  they  exhibit  a  spirit 
of  dissatisfaction  with  evil  and  a  desire  for  justice,  peace  and 
kindness  for  a  community.  But,  as  Tolstoy  observes,  these  things 
have  undergone  astonishing  perversions  in  the  interests  of  a 
cruelly  selfish  priesthood  and  government. 

No  character  is  wholly  balanced,  no  one  has  the  completeness 
imagined  to  be  in  heroes.  A  vain  man  may  be  justified  in  his 
vanity  by  ability.  A  disagreeable  martinet  may  be  far  from 
empty  headed.  A  gifted  scientist  has  been  an  abominable  liar 
which  is  all  the  more  surprising  when  science  begets  truthful- 
ness. Spencer  observes  that  credulity  accompanies  unreliability^ 
and  doubt  is  an  associate  of  truthfuness. 

Every  trait  must  be  regarded  by  itself,  for  a  single  trait,  good 
or  bad,  may  be  developed  in  a  person.  It  is  rare  for  a  whole 
group  of  characteristics  tending  in  one  way,  as  wholly  good  or 
wholly  bad,  to  appear,  so  ''no  man  or  measure  is  wholly  right  or 
wholly  wrong." 

Courage  is  not  a  virtue  when  it  may  be  as  readily  the  servant 
of  villainy  as  of  justice.  Envy  hides  its  hatred  so  as  to  be  the 
more  dangerous.  When  it  finds  a  pretext  it  explodes  with  vir- 
tuous indignation.  Detraction  has  followed  superiority  until 
recognition  of  ability  became  general.  Dr.  Nicholas  Senn,  the 
American  surgeon,  met  with  the  opposition  of  his  mediocre  con- 
freres until  his  researches  obtained  world-wide  fame.  Jealousy 
prompts  venomous  attacks  upon  rivals  particularly  as  they  show 
excellence.  Superiority  is  the  unpardonable  sin,  in  your  par- 
ticular profession  or  business.  Nor  will  humility  save  you.  A 
Russian  proverb  is :  "Make  yourself  a  lamb  and  the  wolf  is 
ready." 


CHARACTER. 


535 


The  wrecking  disposition  may  be  so  strong  that  one  may 
be  willing  to  destroy  cities  for  loot,  sink  ships  for  salvage,  derail 
trains  and  kill  passengers  for  plunder,  conspire  to  have  friends 
lose  fortunes  for  the  sake  of  a  few  hundreds  of  dollars  gain. 
This  wrecking  disposition  in  all  its  manifestations,  from  political 
boodlering  down  to  sacking  countries,  dates  further  back  to  the 
grab  instinct  associated  with  merciless  lack  of  sympathy,  and  is 
consequently  shown  by  low-grade  intellects,  however  otherwise 
"intelligent."  Jesuitical  inclinations  may  go  to  the  extent  of  sac- 
rificing friends  to  gain  what  may  be  considered  some  worthy  end. 

Some  characters  are  unstable,  others  fixed.  Some  never  finish 
work  enthusiastically  begun,  others  plan  and  persist  in  carrying 
out  the  work  of  years.  Some  are  reliable  under  ordinary  cir- 
cumstances and  quick  to  take  advantage  of  opportunities,  as 
during  the  great  Chicago  fire  or  any  vast  popular  upheaval  the 
bandit  spirit  appears  where  before  it  was  unsafe  to  show  itself. 
There  are  the  rash,  the  impulsive  and  the  deliberate  and  cautious. 
Attempts  have  been  made  to  classify  by  temperaments  but  such 
things  are  too  artificial  in  the  main. 

Holmes  holds  that  every  human  being-  has  in  him  stuff  for 
one  novel  in  three  volumes,  duodecimo.  But  the  novelists  create 
impossible  characters.  In  their  novels  children  talk  like  sages, 
the  hero  is  powerful,  rich  and  handsome;  he  swims  seas,  lifts 
bulls  by  the  tail  and  performs  other  prodigies,  his  hair  breadth 
escapes  are  always  successful,  but  he  never  can  speak  the  simple 
word  that  prevents  misunderstanding  and  suffering.  He  allows 
the  murderer  of  his  father  and  wife  to  have  the  best  hold  in 
rough  and  tumble  fight,  as  in  Lorna  Doon.  He  marries  the  most 
beautiful  girl  and  always  saves  some  one  from  drowning. 

The  value  of  popular  estimates  of  character  appears  in  epi- 
curean being  equivalent  to  gourmand  when  Epicurus  inveighed 
against  gluttony.  Machiavelli  described  the  soullessness  of 
nature  and  is  credited  with  applauding  it.  Boycott  was  the 
victim  and  not  the  originator  of  boycotting.  Tom  Paine  was  a 
lover  of  liberty  and  Voltaire  was  another,  both  of  whom  were 
held  up  to  execration  as  irreligious  and  both  believed  in  God 
and  had  infinitely  higher  conceptions  of  the  deity  than  the  de- 
signing who  turned  the  ignorant  against  them.     Draco,  B.  C. 


536  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

700,  is  accused  of  awarding  death  for  all  crimes  when  he  merely 
wrote  up  the  existing  Athenian  laws  in  an  endeavor  to  purify 
Ihem.  General  Macias  was  accepted  by  the  Spaniards  as  having 
great  mental  endowments  when  it  was  the  physical  superiority 
that  occasioned  Isabella  the  second  to  raise  him  rapidly  from 
the  rank  of  common  soldier  ''for  extraordinary  capacity," 

Probasco  gave  $700,000  to  the  city  of  Cincinnati,  which  per- 
mitted him  to  suffer  want  in  his  old  age. 

Goethe,  in  Wilhelm  Meister,  remarks  that  the  man  who  is 
born  with  a  talent  which  he^  is  meant  to  use,  finds  his  greatest 
happiness  in  using  it,  and  Aristotle  claimed  that  to  be  happy 
means  to  be  self-sufficient.  Schopenhauer  expresses  the  same 
thing  in  saying  that  a  high  degree  of  intellect  tends  to  make  a 
man  unsocial  and  that  the  ordinary  man  places  his  life's  happi- 
ness in  things  external  to  him,  so  that  when  he  loses  them  or 
finds  them  disappointing,  the  foundation  of  his  happiness  is 
destroyed.    Goldsmith  adds  his  opinion  in  the  lines : 

"Still  to  ourselves  in  every  place  consigned 
Gur  own  felicity  we  make  or  find." 

Stobseus,  in  his  exposition  of  the  Peripatetic  philosophy,  says 
that  happiness  means  vigorous  and  successful  activity  in  all 
your  undertakings. 

Undoubtedly  conditions  of  stomach,  heart,  liver  and  other 
organs  determine  the  dismal  or  sanguine  nature  as  well  as  dark 
or  bright  days  and  the  state  of  the  weather,  but  Boswell  digressed 
long  enough  from  his  worship  of  Johnson  to  quote  a  Turkish 
lady  who  had  been  educated  in  France,  as  exclaiming:  "Ma  foi 
Monsieur,  notre  bonheur  depend  de  la  fagon  que  notre  sang 
circule." 

The  influence  of  contact  with  the  world  in  developing  char- 
acter is  apparent  in  instances  where  imprisonment  prevented  the 
mental  exercise  as  in  the  cases  of  Casper  Hauser,  the  son  of  the 
grand  duke  of  Baden,  and  a  Missouri  case  named  Deitrich,  both 
of  these,  when  liberated,  were  practically  animals  without  speech. 

Diseases,  such  as  scarlet  fever,  small  pox,  diphtheria,  typhoid 
fever,  especially  when  occurring  before  development  has  taken 
place,  often  arrests  or  alters  the  brain  structure  and  profoundly 


CHARACTER. 


537 


modifies  character.  I  have  known  children  to  be  abused  at  their 
homes  and  in  school  for  backwardness  and  stupidity  when  the 
discovery  that  the  eyesight  was  bad  and  the  use  of  spectacles 
resulted  in  disclosing  a  keenness  of  intellect  little  suspected.  Par- 
tial deafness  from  middle-ear  diseas»e  obstructs  intellectual 
growth  and  as  the  world  is  usually  uncharitable,  the  sufferer  is 
taken  for  a  dunce.  Increased  knowledge  of  causres  of  erratic 
behavior  begets  charitableness.  The  irritability  of  epilepsy 
should  always  cause  allowances  to  be  made.  We  do  w^hat  our 
make-up  impels  us  to  do,  a  certain  shaped  brain,  with  the  co- 
operation of  other  organs,  entails  a  certain  character.  An  injury 
to  the  head  or  the  rupture  or  plugging  of  an  artery  in  the  brain 
may  suddenly  change  a  character  radically  and  for  the  worse, 
as  when  a  steady,  respected,  aged  man  all  at  once  behaves  like  a 
fool  or  criminal.  Though  streaks  of  meanness  may  exist  natur- 
ally as  where  a  millionaire  father  robs  his  own  son  who  is  trying 
to  struggle  up  out  of  grinding  poverty.  I  knew  a  man  who 
stole  a  patent  from  his  own  boy  and  appropriated  his  earnings 
besides.  Usually  the  father  makes  sacrifices  to  help  his  children. 
The  primitive  intestine  must  be  too  strong  where  there  is  so  much 
selfishness. 

Characters  differ  in  animals  of  the  same  species,  some  horses, 
dogs  or  monkeys  being  intelligent  and  others  stupid,  some  sym- 
pathetic, others  cruel.  The  fox  is  naturally  adroit,  the  shark 
voracious.  Sentiment  cannot  be  denied  to  dogs  when  an  old  one 
may  snap  and  snarl  unnoticed  at  a  powerful  young  wolf  dog  who 
could  kill  a  bull  dog  in  a  minute's  encounter.  The  strong  young 
dog  seems  to  realize  the  irresponsibility  of  the  aged  toothless 
one  and  pity  his  helplessness.  The  South  American  puma  is 
astonishingly  gentle  to  the  human  race,  though  fierce  with  other 
animals,  probably  due  to  the  pumas  having  been  domesticated  by 
the  ancient  Peruvians.  Some  monkeys  are  sedate  and  others  play- 
ful, the  sacred  monkey  of  India  is  melancholy,  the  mandril  is 
ferocious.  Sir  John  Anderson  says  that  a  dark  and  a  pale  race 
of  orangs  may  be  distinguished;  a  sort  of  Aryan  and  African 
color  distinction.  One  gorilla  may  be  gentle,  though  most  others 
are  malicious. 

The  oriental  mind  is  incomprehensible  to  the  European.     A 


538  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Turk  will  not  hurt  a  dog  from  a  superstitious  fear  to  do  so. 
Hindoos  fear  to  brush  flies  away  imagining  them  incarnations 
of  their  friends. 

The  Italians  have  a  saying  that  St.  James  put  the  heart  of  a 
fox  and  the  fang  of  a  wolf  in  a  bladder  and  blew  it  up  and  called 
it  a  Spaniard.  The  peculiarities  of  other  natives  are  ascribable 
to  climate  and  long  ages  of  circumstances.  Those  whose  mar- 
riage customs  admitted  of  the  pernicious  consanguine  an4  very 
early  mating  would  surely  degenerate.  Too  much  fighting  and 
hardship  prevented  the  Irish  from  attaining  the  highest  develop- 
ment. They  are  still  practically  in  the  patriarchal  stage  and  with 
difficulty  can  be  tribally  loyal.    They  do  best  abroad. 

Some  business  men  fancy  they  can  read  faces  and  that  they 
have  intuitive  abilities  to  tell  character.  The  fact  is,  every  one 
is  an  unconscious  physiognomist  and  all  of  us  form  prejudices 
against  or  likings  for  persons  because  they  resemble  those  whom 
we  had  occasion  to  dislike  or  like  in  the  past.  So  intuition  is 
merely  a  memory  exercise,  and  a  very  unreliable  one,  too.  Some 
carry  this  to  the  extreme  of  hating  one  who  has  a  certain  family 
name,  or  because  he  combs  his  hair  as  some  scoundrel  did,  and 
so  on.  But  prejudices  are  ingrained.  We  approve  of  method- 
ism,  Catholicism,  homoeopathy,  allopathy,  eddyism,  mormonism, 
the  republican  or  democratic  party  because  we  were  raised  to  like 
or  hate  such  matters  and  grow  angry  if  any  one  tries  to  unsettle 
our  regard.  But  thinking  makes  the  head  ache  and  we  have  to 
devote  all  our  time  to  getting  a  living,  or  spending  what  we  have 
made. 

The  Zurich  parson  Lavater  formulated  a  foolish  lot  of  rules 
of  physiognomy.  In  a  general  way  we  are  impressed  by  faces 
as  expressing  certain  characters,  and  as  we  grow  older  unlearn 
much  that  we  thought  we  had  known.  The  kind  face  we  rever- 
enced may  with  experience  disgust  us  for  its  hypocricy,  the  ugly 
man  we  feared  may  later  be  loved  for  his  good  qualities.  A 
large  jaw  is  a  survival  from  savages  with  great  force  of  char- 
acter and  in  turn  they  inherited  this  jaw  from  animals  with  large 
muscular  and  bony  development.  Determination,  not  necessarily 
brutality,  is  indicated  by  the  mastiff  mouth  for  these  reasons. 

As  for  off-hand  character  reading  the  policeman  sees  guilt  in 


CHARACTER. 


539 


every  movement.  The  prisoner  pales  or  flushes,  he  is  calm  and 
therefore  hardened.  He  talks  too  much  or  is  silent.  All  these 
are  evidences  of  guilt  to  the  undisciplined  intellect.  Detectives 
have  a  maxim  that  the  honest  man  behaves  like  a  guilty  one 
and  vice  versa.    None  of  these  opinions  are  worth  a  rush. 

Precocity  is  not  always  desirable  in  a  child  as  it  may  indicate 
tuberculosis  or  some  latent  defect  which  will  act  detrimentally 
later.  Most  prodigies  lose  their  abilities  and  if  one  part  of  the 
brain  is  unduly  nourished  it  may  be  at  the  expense  of  another 
part.  Blindness  may  be  associated  with  a  prodigious  L^uditory 
memory,  in  my  opinion  due  to  the  extra  vascularity  of  the  hearing 
centre  where  the  visual  centre  is  deprived  of  blood. 

Even  genius  may  have  small  traits  as  when  Virchow  truckled 
to  ecclesiastical  prejudices  against  the  evolutionary  theory  and 
Cuvier  snubbed  Lamarck.  Prof.  E.  D.  Cope^  has  an  excellent 
editorial  on  this  unfairness,  instancing  an  able  archaeologist  like 
Brinton  as  inconsistent  and  leaning  to  popular  prejudice  with 
lack  of  biological  information  and  yet  he  could  be  instructive 
where  his  prejudices  are  not  concerned. 

Correlation  is  the  genius  method  with  intense  application, 
Helvetius  regarded  it  as  continued  attention,  but  there  is  an 
anterior  structural  cause  in  brain  and  body  development.  Under 
genius  has  been  grouped  many  diverse  peculiarities  and  the  word 
has  never  been  satisfactorily  defined.  It  expresses  great  ability 
in  the  main,  and  some  regard  it  as  different  from  talent.  The 
matter  is  more  fully  discussed  in  my  recent  work  on  insanity.^ 

Voltaire  wrote  that : 

"Nothing  but  a  name  remains  of  those  who  commanded  bat- 
talions and  fleets ;  nothing  results  to  the  human  race  from  a  hun- 
dred battles  gained,  but  the  great  men  of  whom  I  have  spoken 
(Sully,  Aloliere,  Lebrun,  Bossuet,  Poussin,  Descartes,  and 
others)  prepared  pure  and  durable  delights  for  generations  un- 
born. A  canal  that  connects  two  seas,  a  picture  by  Poussin,  a 
beautiful  tragedy,  a  discovered  truth,  are  things  a  thousand 
times  more  precious  than  all  the  annals  of  the  court,  than  all  the 
narratives  of  war.     You  know  that  with  me,  great  men  rank 

*  American  Naturalist,   Oct.,   1894,  p.  902. 
"Medical  Jurisprudence  of  Insanity,  p.  843. 


540  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

first."  I  call  great  men  all  those  who  have  excelled  in  the  useful 
or  the  agreeable.     The  ravagers  of  provinces  are  mere  heroes. 

*'Every  desolator  of  the  earth  began  his  work  of  massacre 
and  ruin  by  solemn  acts  of  religion  and,  while  the  ground  still 
smoked  with  carnage,  hastened  to  the  temple  to  repeat  those 
solemn  acts." 

Prominent  men,  would  be  leaders  of  men  in  various  ways, 
creditable  or  discreditable,  have  suffered  defeat  of  their  ambi- 
tions, but  the  philosopher  who  works  calmly  along,  caring  noth- 
ing for  what  the  world  calls  success,  doing  what  he  can  for  the 
wilderness  of  apes  with  no  expectation  of  appreciation,  is  the 
happiest.  Too  much  success  may  be  inconvenient,  as  in  the  in- 
stance of  Du  Maurier  who  was  killed  by  popularity.  Voltaire 
was  overwhelmed  by  visits  and  exclaimed  "Deliver  me  from  my 
friends."  Spencer  says  that  those  who  elaborate  new  truths  and 
teach  them  to  their  fellows  are  nowadays  the  real  rulers,  "the 
unacknowledged  legislators,"  the  virtual  kings. 


CHAPTER  XVIII. 
SOCIOLOGY. 

Man  is  the  highest  example  of  a  social  and  communal  animal, 
also  of  the  solitary  animal,  and  these  two  antagonistic  inclinations 
are  combined  and  result  in  a  higher  type. 

Specialism,  generalization,  and  individualism  combine  to  give 
great  advantage,  but  reward  without  service  and  service  without 
reward  and  service  often  with  punishment,  check  human  prog- 
ress. 

The  specialism  enables  teaching  of  those  who  generalize,  and 
thus  the  common  unspecialized  generations  start  oflf  with  all  the 
advantages  of  a  union  of  what  was  specialization  in  former  gener- 
ations. 

Individualism  often  clashes  with  the  inclinations  of  the  race, 
but  the  race  gets  the  benefit  of  the  departures  from  the  ordinary. 

The  social  animals  preserve  the  individuality  which  communal 
animals  surrender.  Solitary  animals  are  family  groups  only,  Hke 
some  of  the  Asiatics,  who  will  not  cohere  in  tribes  which  may 
merely  be  their  own  families  a  few  generations  removed. 

Charles  Morris^  includes  these  three  grades  of  animal  commu- 
nities, the  communal,  social  and  solitary.  Among  ants,  bees, 
termites  and  beavers  the  specially  communal  has  developed;  the 
individual  works  wholly  for  the  community.  At  a  lower  level 
communism  is  so  complete  among  the  hydroid  polyps  that  the 
community  is  an  individual. 

A  toilet  sponge,  when  alive,  is  a  blackish,  cup-shaped,  fleshy 
mass.  The  rotting  of  the  animal  part  reveals  the  horny  skeleton 
through  the  small  holes  through  which  rushes  the  water,  convey- 
ing sustenance,  and  through  the  larger  holes,  or  chimneys,  the 
water  is  thrown  out  volcano  like.  Each  little  sponge  animal  has 
a  whip  with  which  it  lashes  the  sea  water  inward,  and  millions  of 

'  Man  and  His  Ancestors,  p.  8i. 

541 


542  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

these  animals  merely  live  next  to  one  another,  in  one  sense  soli- 
tary, in  another  restricted  sense,  social  or  communal,  and  in  this 
sponge  colony  we  have  an  illustration  of  the  three  forms  of  exist- 
ence being  practically  combined.  Other  animals  in  their  makeup, 
their  internal  anatomy,  are  essentially  the  same;  that  is,  the  cells 
composing  them  are  solitary,  while  bound  together,  as  tribes  are  in 
commercial  relations,  the  entire  organism  existing  as  a  society, 
and  in  turn  the  animal  thus  composed  may  be,  as  regards  others 
of  his  kind,  either  solitary,  communal  or  social,  or  still  further 
combine  many  of  the  peculiarities  of  all  three  types. 

The  prodigality  of  life  can  be  afforded  a  glimpse  by  knowing 
that  the  numbers  of  kinds  of  known  insects  are  250,000,  and  this 
is  about  ten  per  cent  of  the  total  estimated  number.^ 

Beavers  are  expert  divers  and  swimmers,  and  live  in  com- 
munities. Different  sea  lion  families  do  not  associate,  but  wal- 
ruses rush  to  each  other's  aid  when  wounded,  though  they  fight 
among  themselves.  The  Dolphin  is  playful  and  sociable.  True 
seals  are  very  social  and  have  a  very  strong  affection  for  their 
young,  differing  from  the  eared  seal.  Indicatory  that  closely  al- 
lied species  may  acquire  radically  variant  sociological  traits. 

Marmots  live  in  large  communities  in  separate  burrows  in 
company  with  owls  and  rattlesnakes.  The  brown  bear  is  one  of 
the  unsociable  sort.  Macaws  have  assembling  places  at  evening 
before  settling  down,  like  the  rooks.  There  is  significance  in  the 
vulture  and  eagle  being  in  the  same  class,  and  both  having  filthy 
habits,  and  sometimes  they  are  cowardly,  though  the  eagle,  only, 
is  selected  for  national  emblems.  The  scarlet  tanager  follows  fine 
weather  and  is  shy,  suspicious  and  unsociable,  probably  its  bright 
colors  singling  it  out  for  persecution.  The  placing  of  sentinels  is 
an  interesting  animal  ability.  The  macacque  of  Barbary  robs 
gardens  and  posts  sentinels  to  watch.  Wild  horses  of  the  Falk- 
lands  keep  watch  over  their  own  herd  of  mares  and  kick  back 
strays  into  the  herd.  Bees  have  sentinels,  gobies  sentinel  their 
nests  for  from  six  to  nine  days.  The  sea  lion  stands  guard.  ''The 
Mascarene  tortoises  place  sentinels,"  according  to  Leguat,  "at 
some  distance  from  their  troop,  at  the  four  corners  of  their  camp, 

'Lankester  Natural  History,  Vol.  VI,  p.  9. 


SOCIOLOGY.  ^43 

to  which  the  sentinels  turn  their  backs  and  look  as  though  on 
watch.'* 

A  sentinel  among  men  suffers  death  for  neglect,  and  in  such 
cases  fear  emboldens  him  against  the  common  enemy,  hence  fear 
of  the  tribe  may  have  originated  the  sentinel,  as  more  to  be  dread- 
ed than  fear  of  the  enemy. 

Animals  of  many  kinds  are  social,  even  distinct  species  may 
live  together,  as  among  some  American  monkeys  and  united 
flocks  of  rooks,  jackdaws  and  starlings.  Horses,  dogs  and  sheep 
may  be  fond  of  each  other,  as  the  dog  is  of  the  man.  The  dog 
may  be  satisfied  if  his  master  is  in  the  room  and  howl  dismally  if 
alone. 

Higher  animals  warn  one  another  of  danger.  Wild  horses 
strike  attitudes,  rabbits  stamp  on  the  ground,  sheep  and  chamois 
also,  sometimes  whistling.  The  leader  of  a  troop  of  monkeys  acts 
as  sentinel;  a  sociable  habit  of  monkeys  is  to  search  each  other 
for  burrs  or  thorns,  according  to  Brehm,  while  others  thought  the 
search  was  for  parasites.  Hunting  in  packs  is  social.  Pelicans 
fish  in  concert.  Baboons  turn  over  stones  together,  when  too 
large  for  the  strength  of  one,  to  enable  getting  at  insects  beneath. 
Social  animals  mutually  defend  each  other,  and  where  they  fail  to 
do  so,  as  is  the  case  with  some  men,  they  have  not  developed  intel- 
ligence enough  to  overcome  the  indifference  to  others  through 
selfishness.  Bull  bison  drive  cows  and  calves  to  the  centre  of  the 
herd  to  defend  them.  Brehm  tells  of  the  noble  rescue  of  a  baby 
baboon  from  a  pack  of  dogs  at  the  risk  of  the  hero  baboon's  life. 
Associated  animals  have  an  affection  for  each  other  which  is  not 
felt  by  the  non-social,  and  sympathy  is  often  poorly  developed  in 
some  animals,  as  they  may  expel  a  wounded  one  from  the  herd; 
doubtless  there  is  individual  development  of  sympathy  here  and 
there  among  such  animals,  just  as  de  las  Casas  was  Spanish  and 
an  occasional  old  Roman  might  have  disliked  killing  his  aged 
parents  or  deformed  child. 

The  North  American  Indians  abandoned  their  old  and  invalids 
and  the  Fijians  buried  them  alive  if  they  were  not  fit  to  eat. 
There  are  instances  of  an  old  and  blind  pelican  being  kept  fat  by 
its  companions,  and  blind  crows  being  fed  by  comrades.  Dogs 
have  occasionally  sympathized  with  sick  cats,  if  friendly  with 


541  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

them,  and  a  dog  will  sympathize  with  a  beaten  master.  Baboons 
tried  to  protect  one  of  their  number  from  punishment,  and  a  mon- 
key protected  his  keeper  against  a  large  baboon.  Dogs  possess 
some  self-command,  for  they  may  refrain  from  stealing  food  in 
the  absence  of  its  master.  Cats  have  been  known  to  refuse  food 
offered  to  them,  but  steal  the  same  food  when  unnoticed.  Brehm 
notes  that  when  baboons  in  Abyssinia  plunder  a  garden  they 
silently  follow  a  leader,  and  if  an  impudent  young  animal  makes 
a  noise  he  receives  a  slao  from  the  others  to  teach  him  silence  and 
obedience. 

There  is  evidence  of  the  taming  of  horses  by  stone-age  men,, 
and  that  wild  cattle,  from  which  came  the  domesticated  stock, 
were  plentiful  in  the  forests  about  London  in  1174.-  Ancient 
Greeks  domesticated  the  marten  and  Romans  the  mullet.  In 
China  the  turtle  is  captured  by  using  a  sucking  fish.  Arabs  tame 
lizards.  The  seal  has  been  tamed  like  a  dog.  Falcons  were  used 
to  catch  other  birds  in  feudal  days. 

Ants  enslave  one  another  and  domestication  can  be  a  species 
of  slavery ;  the  cuckoo  takes  advantage  of  the  lack  of  intelligence 
of  other  birds  to  make  them  nurses  for  the  cuckoo  young.  Mon- 
keys make  pets  of  smaller  mammals.  The  oriole  and  ox-pecker 
are  willing  servants  of  the  ox  it  rids  of  ticks. 

The  slave-making  instinct  is  inborn,  inherited,  habitual;  it  is 
part  of  the  grabbing  nature  which  every  animal  shows  in  some 
form.  When  the  animal  evolves  enough  to  get  his  living  at  the 
expense  of  other  animals,  he  proceeds  to  do  so.  Man  tries  to 
make  everything  else  minister  to  his  comfort,  and  naturally  tries 
to  use  his  fellow  men  and  women.  He  can  be  defined  as  a  two- 
legged  animal  who  tries  to  make  all  other  animals  and  men  serve 
himx. 

''Slavery  exists  by  the  law  of  nature,"  says  Aristotle,  meaning 
that  it  was  everywhere  to  be  found.  "It  enabled  the  thinking  and 
leisure  class  to  rise,"  says  Bagehot. 

Slaves  universally,  of  all  kinds,  political,  religious,  and  other- 
wise, are  required  to  believe  that  God  gave  them  to  their  masters. 

Puffendorf  had  taken  the  ground  that  slavery  was  founded  on 
contract.  Voltaire  said:  "Show  me  the  contract,  and  if  it  is 
signed  by  the  party  to  be  the  slave,  I  may  believe  you." 


SOCIOLOGY.  545 

Slavery  exists  from  the  grossest  forms  of  body  stealing  to  the 
more  subtle  forms  of  mental  dominating,  in  some  places  abolished 
but  in  other  places  still  existing.  The  ants  still  capture  aphides 
and  the  Arabs  hunt  Africans. 

Both  England  and  America  passed  through  degrading  periods 
when  slavery,  not  alone  of  Africans,  but,  under  various  pretexts 
of  all  kinds  and  nationalities,  even  their  own,  were  practiced. 

I  personally  knew  a  Baptist  clergyman  in  Nashville,  Tennes- 
see, whose  mulatto  slaves  bore  an  unmistakable  resemblance  to 
him,  and  were  recognized  as  his  children,  and  when  the  Civil  War 
broke  out  he  was  confident  that  the  United  States  would  succeed 
in  freeing  all  slaves.  So  he  sold  his  own  children  to  planters  liv- 
ing farther  South.  He  suffered  no  loss  of  respect  among  his 
neighbors,  who  were  aware  of  the  financial  stroke. 

In  the  latter  years  of  Henry  I.  the  practice  of  kidnaping  men 
for  the  Irish  slave  market  was  in  full  career  and  formed  the  most 
lucrative  branch  of  trade  at  Bristol.^  A  hundred  years  later  than 
Dunstan,  the  wealth  of  the  English  nobles  was  said  to  have  sprung 
from  breeding  slaves  for  the  market.  It  was  in  the  reign  of  the 
first  Norman  king  that  slavery  was  suppressed  in  its  last  strong- 
hold, the  port  of  Bristol. 

In  959  slavery  began  to  be  modified,  kidnaping  and  the  sale  of 
children  were  prohibited.  The  slave  was  exempt  from  toil  on 
Sundays  and  holy  days.  Athelstane  placed  free  and  slaves  on  the 
same  plane  of  responsibility  for  crime.  The  slave  trade  from 
ports  was  prohibited,  and  both  church  and  state  endeavored  to 
stop  slavery  altogether.  But  the  decrease  of  slavery  went  on  side 
by  side  with  an  increasing  degradation  of  the  bulk  of  the  people. 
The  freeman  became  a  degraded  villein,  dependent  upon  a  lord. 
In  America  the  presence  of  negro  slaves  degraded  the  white 
peasants  until  it  was  proposed  in  earnest  to  enslave  these  white 
free  men  also,  as  they  were  not  fit  to  be  free.  The  Virginia  news- 
papers of  1858  to  1862  argued  in  that  way. 

''Christianity  in  the  early  ages  never  denounced  slavery,  but 
filled  the  minds  of  both  masters  and  slaves  with  ideas  utterly  in- 
consistent with  the  spirit  of  slavery."*     But  the  bible  as  taught  in 

"  K.  Nordgate,  England  Under  the  Augevin  Kings  V.  I,  Ch.  I. 
*  W.  R.  Brownlow,  Lectures  on  Slavery,  Ch.  I. 


546  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

the  Southern  States  advised  the  slave  to  "be  content  in  the  lot  to 
which  the  Lord  had  called  him,"  and  in  other  ways  was  expound- 
ed as  justifying  slavery  from  Christian  standpoints.  The  Span- 
iards made  use  of  the  aboriginal  Rahamans  to  lure  them  into  slav- 
ery. They  told  them  that  they  would  take  them  in  ships  to  the 
heavenly  shores  to  meet  their  relatives,  and  40,000  were  sent  to 
perish  in  the  mines  of  the  island  of  Hispaniola.  Columbus  spoke 
of  these  natives  as  gentle,  inoffensive  and  always  smiling. 

Bartolome  de  las  Casas,  who  became  a  priest  in  15 10,  deserves 
great  credit  for  standing  alone  in  his  denunciation  of  human 
slavery  in  the  West  Indies  by  the  Spaniards.  He  was  hated, 
thwarted  and  entrapped  in  many  ways. 

The  Portuguese  introduced  slavery  into  Brazil  in  the  seven- 
teenth century,  and  it  was  not  abolished  until  Sept.  28,  1871,  long 
after  the  American  civil  war.  The  terms  of  the  Brazilian  eman- 
cipation were  that  *'the  children  of  slave  mothers  were  free  after 
serving  their  owners  21  years  as  apprentices."  A  general  liber- 
ation mania  followed,  indicating  that  the  people  were  better  than 
their  rulers. 

Many  are  the  pretexts  for  practicing  slavery  and  various  are 
the  names  under  which  it  exists.  Transportation,  penal  colonies, 
extradition,  contract  systems,  peonage,  villeinage,  prisoners  of 
war,  apprenticeship,  and  so  on  indefinitely,  all  such  terms  are  con- 
nected with  slavery  pure  and  simple,  however  disguised.  The 
present  Siberia  and  the  island  of  Saghalien,  colonies  of  Russia, 
are  horrible  slave  regions  for  convicts. 

The  Spaniards  maintained  slavery  in  Cuba  up  to  the  time  of 
Weyler's  reconcentrado  slaughters.  Peonage  as  practiced  in 
Mexico,  and  also  in  New  Mexico,  under  the  United  States  gov- 
ernment sanction,  is  slavery.  The  Boers  enslaved  the  Kaffirs  in 
South  Africa,  and  much  of  the  casus  belli  there  was  the  freeing 
of  negroes  by  the  English,  though  the  Cornwall  mines  contain 
men,  women  and  children  who  have  never  seen  the  sunlight, 
through  being  born  and  dying  in  Cornish  coal  mines.  A  state- 
ment that  is  not  recklessly  made.  There  is  religious  slavery  of 
both  mind  and  body  everywhere  to  enable  a  privileged  class  to 
live  upon  the  labors  of  the  superstitious.  Society  permits  sweat- 
shops to  extract  the  lives  of  unfortunates,  and  there  are  multi- 


SOCIOLOGY. 


547 


tudes  of  other  methods  of  greed  being  glutted  at  the  expense 
of  others. 

The  Arabs  steal  men  in  Africa  for  the  Eastern  market,  but 
England  is  making  headway  against  this  traffic  there.  In  A.  D. 
1897  the  British  headed  off  the  slave  raiders  into  Nigeria,  and 
generally  through  west  and  South  Africa  the  trade  is  being  sup- 
pressed. 

Under  tricky  contracts  for  labor  of  convicts  South  Carolina 
managed  to  restore  slavery  in  1901  to  a  great  extent,  even,  it  is 
claimed,  easily  convicting  negroes  for  the  sake  of  making  slaves 
of  them. 

Penitentiaries  and  war  prison  pens,  some  insane  asylums  and 
poor  houses  are  often  scenes  of  brutal  opportunity  where  the 
slaves  are  given  over  to  political  or  military  masters,  who,  being 
unchecked,  reveal  their  animal  ferocity  and  often  resort  to  abuse 
of  the  helpless  merely  as  an  exercise.  The  "Daughters  of  the 
Confederacy"  are  said  to  have  objected  to  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin 
being  read  or  played  in  the  South,  as  it  gave  false  ante-bellum 
ideas,  such  as  that  slaves  were  not  kindly  treated.  Slavery  favors 
degeneracy.  It  places  no  premium  upon  generosity  or  rights  of 
others,  individuality  or  high  intelligence;  the  qualities  of  man- 
hood, are  checked.  Slavery  reacts  badly  on  the  masters  by  de- 
stroying their  self-reliance.  The  most  helpless  creatures  are  the 
red  ants,  who  depend  almost  wholly  upon  their  black  ant  slaves. 
Dependence  lessens  ability  to  care  for  self  and  tends  to  helpless- 
ness and  loss  of  organs  useful  to  the  free  state.  Luxury  de- 
grades and  in  tropical  regions  where  nature  furnishes  ease  and 
plenty  the  mind  does  not  develop  readily. 

There  was  slavery  among  the  Hebrews  of  the  old  testament, 
and  it  was  very  ancient  among  the  Greeks  and  Egyptians,  and  in 
Rome  it  was  corrupting  in  the  extreme. 

There  was  an  uprising  of  slaves  in  B.  C.  133  in  Italy,  owing 
to  hunger,  cold  and  general  despair. 

It  was  a  question  whether  Rome  or  Carthage  was  to  afford 
the  slaves  to  the  other.  Scipio  levelled  Carthage  in  B.  C.  146, 
and  enslaved  its  last  inhabitant. 

During  the  seven  days  of  the  Saturnalia  dedicated  to  Saturn 


54^  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

in  ancient  Rome,  slaves  were  admitted  to  equality  with  their  mas- 
ters. 

B.  C.  73  there  were  schools  for  training  gladiators  in  which 
there  were  slaves,  abandoned  waifs,  criminal  prisoners  and  un- 
fortunates generally.  Spartacus  led  seventy  escapes  from  the 
school  at  Capua,  and  gathered  a  large  force  of  slaves  with  which 
he  defeated  the  Roman  armies.  Finally  Spartacus  and  35,000  of 
his  insurgents  were  slain^  6,000  of  them  being  crucified  by  Pom- 
pey.  In  Gaul  slavery  of  captives  was  the  rule,  and  under  Rome 
became  more  systematized  and  oppressive.  Some  broke  out  into 
brigandage  with  the  free  men  whose  lot  was  as  bad  as  the  slaves. 
Free  may  be  a  mere  catch  word  and  not  really  exist. 

In  1085  William  of  Normandy  abolished  the  death  penalty 
and  the  slave  trade.  He  loved  hunting  so  much  that  he  swept 
away  villages  to  make  parks  for  his  deer  and  thousands  of  peas- 
ants were  made  homeless.  He  had  sixty-eight  of  these  forests. 
The  New  Forest  in  Hampshire  was  the  sixty-ninth,  and  occa- 
sioned the  greatest  suffering.  So  it  is  not  likely  that  his  aboli- 
tion of  slavery  had  any  reference  to  humane  considerations. 

In  A.  D.  1 100,  like  all  the  great  revolutions  of  society,  the  ad- 
vance from  serfage  was  a  silent  one ;  indeed,  its  more  galling  in- 
stances of  oppression  seemed  to  have  slipped  unconsciously  away. 
Some,  like  the  eel-fishing,  were  changed  for  an  easy  rent,  others 
like  the  slavery  of  the  fullers  and  the  toil  of  flax,  simply  disap- 
peared. By  usage,  by  omission,  by  downright  forgetfulness,  here 
a  little  struggle,  there  by  a  present  to  a  needy  abbott,  the  town 
won  freedom.^ 

"Mad,"  as  the  land  owners  of  England  called  him,  John 
Ball  was,  in  1377,  the  first  to  preach  natural  equality.  "By  what 
right  are  they  whom  we  call  lords  greater  folk  than  we  ?"  "Why 
do  they  hold  us  in  serfage?"  The  popular  rhyme  of  his  time 
asked:  "When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span,  who  was  then  the 
gentleman  ?"^ 

In  England  the  numbers  of  the  unfree  were  swelled  by  death 
and  crime.  Famine  drove  men  to  bend  the  knee  in  the  evil  days 
for  meat,  the  debtor  flung  on  the  ground  the  freeman's  sword  and 

'Green,  ibid,  p.  117. 
"Tbid.  p.  314. 


SOCIOLOGY. 


549 


spear  and  took  up  the  laborer's  mattock  and  placed  his  head,  as  a 
slave,  in  his  master's  hands.  Criminals  became  crime-serfs  of 
plaintiff  or  king.  Sometimes  a  father,  pressed  by  need,  sold  chil- 
dren and  wife  into  bondage."^  There  was  a  papal  doctrine  of  the 
condemnation  of  Jews  to  perpetual  bondage,  in  the  thirteenth  and 
fourteenth  centuries.  In  Poland  the  peasant  was  always  the 
hereditary  property  of  the  lord  of  the  manor,  as  claimed  by  the 
nobles,  but  this  is  denied  by  the  common  people. 

Villeinage  serfdom  from  the  seventh  to  the  eleventh  centuries 
was  the  bondage  in  which  were  held  those  who  cultivated  the  soil. 

Rome,  Italy  and  the  church  patronized  slavery  down  to  the 
sixteenth  century.  The  popes  issued  edicts  of  slavery  against 
whole  towns  and  provinces.  Boniface  VIII,  in  1294  to  1348; 
Clement  V,  against  Venice ;  Sixtus  IV  against  the  Florentines ; 
also  Gregory  XI  against  the  same  people,  1375-1378;  Julius  II 
against  Bologne  and  Venice.  Whoever  captured  inhabitants  of 
such  places  had  holy  permission  to  make  slaves  of  them.  Rome 
was  the  last  of  Europe  to  retain  slavery.  The  theological  claim 
was  made  that  original  sin  deprived  man  of  any  right  to  freedom. 
By  1450,  in  the  seventy  years  which  had  intervened  since  the  last 
peasant  uprising,  villeinage  had  died  naturally  away  before  the 
progress  of  social  changes.^ 

The  Barbary  States  relinquished  Moslem  slavery  of  Christians 
in  A.  D.  1816.  The  peasants  were  freed  in  Hungary  and  Aus- 
tria in  1849.  Russian  emancipation  of  serfs  occurred  by  order  of 
Alexander  II  in  1861,  whereby  twenty-two  million  serfs  and  twen- 
ty-six million  more  peasants  who  were  practically  serfs,  were  "lib- 
erated."    But  their  condition  is  as  bad  as  before. 

There  is  no  slavery  among  the  Afghans  and  some  other  be- 
nighted Asiatics.  The  institution  of  slavery  appears  to  have 
been  a  step  toward  civilization,  for  instead  of  slaughter  of  pris- 
oners they  were  enslaved. 

In  1 38 1  what  was  known  as  the  Wat  Tyler  rebellion  occurred 
in  England,  precipitated  by  a  tax  gatherer's  insult  to  Tyler's 
young  daughter,  though  the  real  cause  back  of  it  was  the  practical 

^Ibid,  p.  19. 
'  Ibid,  p.  353- 


550  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

serfdom  of  the  people.  With  30,000  men  he  forced  from  Richard 
I,  the  boy  king,  letters  of  emancipation,  and  the  king  pretended  to 
favor  all  their  demands.  Later,  with  his  army  of  40,000,  Richard 
revoked  his  grant  of  freedom  and  said :  '*In  bondage  you  shall 
abide,  and  that  not  your  old  bondage,  but  a  worse !"  Seven 
thousand  men  perished  on  the  gallows,  parliament  trimmed  to  any 
breeze,  but  the  land  owners  refused  consent  to  free  their  slaves. 
So  no  sooner  does  William  ''abolish"  slavery  than  it  crops  up 
again  later.  This  has  been  the  world's  experience,  usually  a  new 
name  is  given  it  just  as  tyranny,  when  overthrown,  hides  itself 
behind  some  new  disguise. 

In  1382  Wyclif  headed  a  movement  for  intellectual  freedom 
at  the  same  time  Wat  Tyler  fought  for  bodily  emancipation.  The 
one  against  taxing  the  mind  out  of  existence,  and  the  other  the 
body  out  of  sustenance.^ 

A.  D.  1395  Richard  II  till  24  years  old  was  enslaved  by  his 
guardian  uncle,  when  he  asserted  himself.  So  no  human  being 
is  less  than  another  liable  to  slavery  in  some  form  or  other,  mental 
or  physical,  peasant  or  king. 

The  pride  and  cunning  of  the  pope  in  enslaving  the  English 
people  was  the  theme  of  Wyclif  and  the  "Lollards"  in  the  time  of 
Henry  IV  up  to  A.  D.  1413. 

In  all  this  "Christian  era"  persecution  of  the  Jews  went  on,, 
especially  between  the  time  of  Edward  to  that  of  Cromwell. 

The  bastile  of  Paris  was  originated  to  protect  against  English 
foes  in  1356;  it  was  enlarged  by  Charles  V,  and  after  his  death 
made  a  prison.  Charles  VI  enlarged  it  still  more,  and  it  was 
finally  destroyed  by  the  enraged  people  June  14,  1789.  The  peo- 
ple were  inhumanly  treated  by  royalty  in  this  prison. 

Soldiers  committed  suicide  under  Frederick  "the  great"  to 
escape  the  severity  of  his  service. 

Queen  Catherine  of  Russia  put  a  guard  over  a  flower  in  her. 
field,  and  then  forgot  both  flower  and  sentinel.  Until  the  time 
of  Nicholas  III  guards  had  been  placed  in  the  same  spot,  and  all 
had  forgotten  why  he  was  stationed  there. 

Pushkin,  the  Russian  poet,  wrote :  "A  horrible  thought  fills 
my  soul  with  gloom;   here  in  the  midst  of  flourishing  fields  and 

"  Ibid,  p.  302. 


SOCIOLOGY. 


551 


hills,  the  lover  of  humanity  sorrowtully  notes  everywhere  the  per- 
nicious signs  of  shameful  ignorance.  Blind  to  tears  and  deaf  to 
moans,  a  scourge  of  men  decreed  by  fate,  a  ruling  class,  unfeeling, 
lawless,  wild,  appropriates  with  ruthless  rod  the  husbandman's 
labor,  property  and  time." 

As  the  Chinaman  was  forced  to  adopt  the  pigtail  by  his  Tartar 
conquerors  as  an  indication  of  inferiority,  and  he  now  considers  it 
a  distinction,  so  women,  handicapped  with  dresses,  cling  to  their 
ancient  attire  as  slaves  sometimes  fought  to  perpetuate  their  own 
slavery  and  as  some  Mormon  women  lai!d  polygamy. 

Darwin^^  dwells  upon  the  enslavement  of  women  being  uni- 
versal and  dating  from  remote  periods,  and  even  today  fathers 
sell  their  daughters  in  Circassia  to  Moslem  procurers,  who  resell 
them  to  rich  men. 

A  race  will  not  advance  if  one-half  is  held  in  slavery  as  women 
are  by  men  to  a  gross  extent  in  such  places  as  Turkey,  where  the 
Sultan  Abdul  Hamid,  the  oppressor,  is  the  son  of  an  Armenian 
woman,  a  race  that  has  been  terribly  oppressed.  What  can  the 
union  of  a  tyrant  and  a  slave  result  in  but  an  Abdul  Hamid,  the 
fox,  the  wolf,  the  coward  jackal,  who  trembles  at  the  idea  of  his 
subjects  having  education  or  liberty.  So  Rome  has  opposed  in- 
struction to  children  as  unfitting  them  to  be  controlled-  in  their 
minds  and  bodies.  The  revenues  of  that  gigantic  political  or- 
ganization, the  Catholic  church,  came  from  devotion  and  super- 
stition imposed  upon  by  a  luxuriating  priesthood  among  a  people 
too  blind  to  see  for  themselves. 

The  greatest  freedom  should  be  permitted  to  women  and  nat- 
ural selection  will  determine  what  station  they  are  fitted  for.  No 
theorist  has  ever  predicted  it. 

Woman  suffrage  dates  from  1790-1849;  since  Mary  Wall- 
land  takes  high  rank  in  prosperity  on  account  of  it.  France  lacks 
advance  owing  to  its  subordinating  women.  When  they  can  leg- 
islate France  will  surprise  herself  by  the  consequences. 

Woman  suffrage  dates  from  1790- 1849,  since  Mary  Wall- 
stonecraft  published  her  "Vindication  of  the  Rights  of  Women" 
in  London,  in  1790.  the  movement  has  gradually  grown.  In 
1840  a  World's  Anti-Slavery  Convention  was  held,  and  woman's 

^"Descent  of  Man,  p.  350. 


552  THE    EVOLUTION     OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

enfranchisement  was  taken  up..  The  meetings  were  sometimes 
mobbed  and  insulted,  and  also  denounced  by  the  pulpit.  The 
movement  was  split  in  two  by  rejection  of  women  delegates.  The 
following  date  certain  advances : 

1842,  Women  in  the  medical  profession. 

1865,  Higher  education  of  women  in  England. 

1869,  Progress  in  Europe  and  America. 

The  world  over,  in  Damascus  and  London,  New  York  and  St. 
Petersburg,  women  are  paid  about  one-half  what  men  receive 
for  the  same  service ;  because  advantage  is  taken  of  their  being 
weak  physically,  and  unable  to  assert  their  rights. 

Louis  XIV  schemed  to  strengthen  the  position  of  the  royal 
bastards  by  imposing  a  tax  on  marriage  licenses  so  exorbitant 
that  the  matrimonially  inclined  preferred  living  in  what  was  wed- 
lock to  their  consciences,  but  concubinage  in  law.  The  extor- 
tion went  to  cofifers  by  which  the  extravagances  of  the  Dues  and 
mademoiselles  were  supplied. 

Sweat  shops  are  many,  where  starvmg  men,  women  and  chil- 
dren toil,  upon  eye-straining  work,  such  as  sewing  and  making 
cigars,  underpaid,  sick,  abused  and  even  robbed  of  their  scanty 
earnings  by  men  who  are  "respected  members  of  churches  and 
society." 

Homes  are  multitudinous  where  servants  are  deprived  of  de- 
cent comforts,  roomed  in  foul,  damp  basements,  with  no  time 
from  their  work  to  clean  their  own  sleeping  places.  Practically 
many  housewives  thus  unintentionally,  but  nevertheless  effectual- 
ly, murder  their  servants,  legally  and  without  compunctions. 
"Doctor,  if  that  girl  is  sick,  please  send  her  at  once  to  a  charity 
hospital ;  she  cannot  stay  here,"  is  an  often  heard  request  from  a 
palatial  domicile,  concerning  some  over-worked  servant. 

Among  dangerous  handicrafts  it  has  been  estimated  that  the 
feather  workers  for  women's  hats  inhale  fine  feathers  and  are 
occasionally  suffocated  by  them,  that  70  per  cent  of  needle  polish- 
ers, 80  of  flint  workers,  40  of  grindstone  makers,  and  36  per 
cent  of  stone  cutters  end  consumptive.  Glass  workers,  diamond 
cutters,  millers,  phosphorus  and  lead  workers  suffer  also  in  yari* 
ous  ways. 

In  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries  the  factories  tend- 


SOCIOLOGY. 


553 


€d  to  prolong  the  working-  day,  but  legislation  began  in  the 
nineteenth  century  against  it.  The  usual  trick  was  to  knock  out 
the  noon  rest  and  then  by  candle  light  child  and  female  labor  was 
brought  in. 

Voltaire  held  that  a  government  would  be  worthy  of  Hotten- 
tots in  which  it  permitted  to  a  certain  number  of  men  to  say: 
"Let  those  pay  taxes  who  work;  we  ought  not  to  pay  anything 
because  we  are  idle." 

It  is  difficult  for  all  and  impossible  for  some  to  be  convinced 
of  our  common  animal  existence.  ''Fine  feathers  make  fine 
birds."  Strip  some  of  them  and  what  puny,  helpless  things  they 
are.  Similarly  with  the  wealthy,  their  glitter,  finery  and  power 
seem  to  cast  them  in  st  better  rnould  than  the  ordinary.  A  physi- 
cian who  is  familiar  with  practice  among  one  class  of  people  is 
often  pu'zzled  upon  encountering  another  class  as  though  diseases 
differed  between  the  rich  and  poor.  Ex-President  Benjamin 
Harrison  in  a  will  contest  in  Richmond,  Indiana,  asked  me  on 
the  witness  stand  if  the  Chicago  asylum  was  not  for  the  pauper 
insane,  to  intimate  that  knowledge  secured  among  that  class  could 
not  avail  with  the  wealthy  insane.  The  inability  of  classes  to 
feel  for  each  other  comes  of  their  separation.  The  miserable 
sufferings  of  a  pauper  dying  neglected  in  a  poor  house  awaken 
pity  only  among  higher  developed  persons.  Those  who  can  feel 
sorrow  only  for  tales  of  pain  among  wealthy  dying  amid  luxu- 
rious surroundings  have  not  evolved  to'  their  best  capabilities. 

In  1903  there  were  19,000  slave  children  estimated  in  Chicago 
working  15  to  18  hours  a  day,  and  often  the  parents  were  to 
blame.  When  the  Wilkesbarre,  Pennsylvania,  miners  were  asked 
by  the  arbitration  committee  how  much  they  were  paid  per  ton 
they  said  they  did  not  know,  as  the  settling  was  made  too  com- 
plicated for  them  to  understand  and  they  took  whatever  was 
given  them,  which  enabled  a  bare  existence.  Child  slavery  is 
said  to  be  taking  the  place  of  former  negro  slavery  in  the  cotton 
factories  of  the  south,  often  controlled  by  northern  capital. 

Prof.  J.  T.  Hatfield,  of  Evanston,  Illinois,  served  on  the 
cruiser  Yale  in  the  Spanish-American  war  and  reported  a  dis- 


554  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

position  to  aristocracy  on  the  part  of  officers  in  resenting  any  re- 
spectability among  the  sailors. 

The  Syrians  are  in  pitiable  ignorance  and  poverty,  the  Sultan 
of  Turkey  allows  only  incorrect  maps,  as  he  does  not  wish  his 
people  to  be  informed,  and  the  Moslem  priests  discourage  learn- 
ing. The  forms  of  slavery  are  innumerable :  the  spendthrift  is 
apt  to  become  the  slave  of  creditors,  alcohol  places  the  victim  in 
the  power  of  others.  Patent  medicines  enslave  dupes  and  rob 
them  of  money  and  health.  Newspapers  print  lying  advertise- 
ments and  refuse  to  expose  frauds,  as  they  share  the  profits  of 
such  deceit.  The  English  opium  trade  with  China  grew  to  a 
million  pounds  sterling  per  year  and  in  1842  England  forced 
China  by  war  to  resume  the  trade. 

As  a  result  of  the  stealing  of  the  brain  work  of  others  such 
men  as  Elisha  Gray  have  been  kept  in  poverty  by  their  enslavers. 
At  the  age  of  63  he  remained  poor  while  others  had  made  millions 
from  his  inventions.  There  died  in  a  southern  city,  recently,  the 
inventor  of  the  typesetting  machine,  which  is  now  in  use  in  nearly 
all  newspaper  offices.  Among  the  things  he  left  was  a  pamphlet 
bitterly  complaining  about  the  treatment  he  had  received  in  re- 
gard to  his  invention  and  expressly  in  reference  to  the  charge 
that  there  was  a  disposition  to  drop  his  name  from  the  machinery 
and  thus  to  rob  him  of  his  reputation  as  an' inventor. ^^ 

Goodyear  was  starving  through  the  greed  of  capitalists  who 
tried  to  steal  his  vulcanizing  process. 

Conspiracy  is  a  natural  means  of  combining  to  accomplish  an 
end  and  is  part  of  the  organizing  propensity  of  man  and  animals. 
Politicians  and  some  tradesmen  are  greatly  inclined  to  make  com- 
binations often  of  a  far-reaching  and  harmful  nature.  In  the 
average  political  insane  asylum  may  be  seen  the  employes  plotting 
together  to  either  keep  their  places,  to  secure  promotion,  to  de- 
grade some  in  their  way,  or  to  get  a  chance  at  plunder  which  their 
superiors  often  seek  to  absorb  for  themselves  alone.  Trustees 
will  plot  to  get  a  medical  superintendent  out  of  the  way  if  he 
is  too  honest  to  join  them  in  their  pilfering,  and  even  the  gov- 

"Philadelphia  Sat.  Ev.  Post,  Feb.  16,  1901. 


SOCIOLOGY. 


555 


ernor  of  a  state  has  dismissed  too  honest  persons  and  replaced 
them  by  thieves  who  would  "work  with  the  party." 

This  state  of  things  is  not  constant  nor  universal,  but  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places  the  well-disposed  and  efficient  are  plotted 
against  by  those  who  devote  their  energies  and  time  to  selfish 
ends.  Every  institution  contains  such  conspirators  and  they 
should  be  sought  for  and  suppressed  promptly  before  legitimate 
work  can  be  safely  done. 

Conspiracy  is  the  easiest  and  commonest  performance  of  men. 
Rascals  float  together,  as  Schopenhauer  says,  and  know  one  an- 
other at  a  glance.  Joan  of  Arc's  record  of  her  Poictier  trial 
disappeared  conveniently  for  her  later  judges,  and  it  could  not 
be  used  at  her  rehabilitation.  Her  appeal  to  the  pope  was  hushed 
up  when  it  was  seen  that  she  did  not  know  how  important  it  was 
for  her. 

Gen.  ^liles  was  threatened  with  court-martial  and  dismissal 
for  calling  attention  to  rotten  meat  issued  to  the  army. 

Cervera  was  sent  to  destruction  by  boodlers  in  Spain,  who, 
fearing  exposure  of  their  steals,  refused  him  a  seat  in  the  cortes, 
as  he  was  under  charges  for  the  loss  of  his  fleet.  They  did  all 
they  could  to  make  loss  of  the  fleet  possible  before  he  started  and 
tried  to  kill  him  to  keep  the  truth  from  appearing. 

Good  men  cannot  combine  as  do  rascals,  for  it  is  to  serve 
some  conspiracy  of  profit  that  draws  knaves  together.  I  noticed 
that  when  the  Dunning  asylum  exposure  was  opposed  by  politi- 
cians it  drew  into  the  opposition  quack  doctors,  ecclesiastical 
hypocrites,  gamblers,  saloonkeepers  and  the  vile  of  all  ranks  and 
degrees. 

The  Highbinders  is  a  secret  society  among  the  Chinese  which 
was  originally  started  to  protect  their  members,  but,  as  so  often 
happens  in  societies,  the  purposes  were  completely  subverted  and 
murder  and  blackmail  became  the  sole  object.  Oaths  binding 
the  members  are  taken  secretly  and  are  given  only  by  the  mouth 
to  the  ear.  A  patriotic  society  ostensibly  to  free  Ireland  became 
controlled  by  a  clique  and  a  few  managers  were  enriched  and 
even  went  to  the  extreme  of  murdering  any  one  who  attempted 
exposure.  In  Turkey  the  Sultan  is  kept  in  ignorance  of  real 
conditions.     His  grand  vizier,  Said  Pasha,  was  remarkably  honest 


556  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

and  was  plotted  against  incessantly  by  dishonest  courtiers  who 
nearly  had  him  executed  once.  He  is  poor,  of  course.  Hassan 
Pasha,  the  corrupt  minister  of  marine,  is  worth  sixty  million  dol- 
lars robbed  from  the  navy  department,  the  ships  of  which  are 
falling  to  pieces,  but  the  Sultan  does  not  know  it.  There  is  a 
colony  in  Damascus  of  the  victims  of  the  Turkish  Sultan's  spy 
system,  the  majority  of  whom  are  doubtless  honorable  and  faith- 
ful officers  who  were  in  the  way  of  rascals  who  fatten  upon  in- 
trigue and  theft.  Siberia  and  Saghalien  have  received  many 
thousands  of  innocent  persons  condemned  for  political  reasons. 

Leonard  Volk  made  a  statue  of  Abraham  Lincoln  for  the 
capital  in  Springfield,  Illinois.  It  represents  the  emancipator 
standing  with  erect  head  and  behind  him  is  a  Roman  chair.  St. 
Gaudans'  statue  in  Lincoln  Park,  Chicago,  copies  this  statue,  but 
moves  the  figure  away  from  contact  with  the  chair,  breaking 
thus  the  solidarity,  and  omits  a  cloak  which  Volk  placed  over  the 
back  of  the  chair  and  which  disposed  of  otherwise  hard  lines, 
and  Volk  claims  that  Lincoln  did  not  incline  his  head  as  in  the 
park  copy.  Vinnie  Ream's  Lincoln  in  the  Washington  capitol  and 
French's  Liberty  of  the  Columbus  Exposition,  a  figure  with  a 
dress  made  like  straight  clap-boards  on  end  holding  aloft  a 
pumpkin  on  which  is  perched  a  crow,  are,  with  the  Christopher 
Columbus  of  the  Lake  Front,  which  finally  went  into  the  scrap 
heap,  typical  of  the  sort  of  art  "statesmen"  authorize. 

Jason  E.  Hammond,  superintendent  of  public  instruction  in 
Michigan^^  claimed  that  lobbying  occurred  in  legislatures  to 
induce  official  corruption  of  public  school  instruction  in  various 
ways  mainly  by  taking  away  standard  books  and  substituting 
foolish  ones.  A  nation  cannot  be  too  jealous  of  interferences 
with  its  public  school  system.  There  are  crafty  ancient  organi- 
zations like  the  Jesuits  who  seek  in  subtle  ways  to  degrade  all 
public  and  private  instruction.  Conspiracies  to  make  man  an 
ape  again  would  be  for  "the  greater  glory  of  God,"  and  inci- 
dentally fill  the  pockets  of  those  interested  in  the  wreckage  of 
mankind.  And  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  not  all  these  con- 
spirators are  bad  by  any  means ;  much  good  work  is  done  by  the 

"Chicago  Times-Herald,  Aug.  15,  1898. 


SOCIOLOGY.  557 

charity  dispensers  of  these  orders  by  individuals  who  ^re  sincere 
and  true  in  heart,  enabling  their  scheming  superiors  to  point  to 
them  and  exclaim,  "See  how  good  we  are!" 

A  percentage  of  the  result  of  changing  text  books  goes  to- 
publishers  who  may  be  the  tools  of  worse  schemers. 

Crowds  are  huddled  together  in  New  York  tenement  houses, 
preyed  upon  by  liquor  selling  landlords,  their  families  perishing 
of  filth-diseases  owing  to  negligence  of  local  politicians.  But 
these  same  crowds  were  ready  to  murder  any  one  who  sought  to 
make  things  better,  because  they  were  owned  body  and  soul  by 
their  political  bosses.  Even  the  post-office  employes  have  beea 
induced  to  intercept  mail  in  the  interests  of  politicians,  particu- 
larly where  there  was  danger  of  their  steal*  being  discovered. 
This  tendency  of  the  abjectly  poor  to  oppose  their  real  friends 
and  patronize  their  destroyers  is  like  the  ignorant  rich  succumb- 
ing to  quacks  who  flatter  them,  not  appreciating  the  fact  tha.t  the 
one  who  spends  his  time  in  learning  how  to  do  the  most  good 
and  be  the  most  efficient  surgeort  or  physician  does  not  loaf  about 
club  rooms  or  attend  pink  teas,  or  otherwise  conspire  to  ingratiate 
himself  among  the  wealthy. 

The  attempt  to  suppress  Lord  Nelson  was  paralleled  by  Samp- 
son's jealousy  of  Schley's  destruction  of  the  Cervera  fleet.  Nel- 
son disobeyed  the  signal  of  recall  which  he  never  heard. ^^  Jervis, 
Lord  St.  Vincent,  omitted  Nelson's  name  from  his  despatch  at  the 
instigation  of  Sir  Robert  Calder,  the  captain  of  the  fleet  in  the 
battle  with  the  Spaniards  in  1797, but  after  the  battle  had  been  won 
mainly  by  Nelson,  his  superior  arrived  to  enjoy  what  Nelson  called 
the  parade  of  taking  possession  of  beaten  enemies,  just  as  Samp- 
son did  when  Cervera  was  captured  by  Schley.  It  would  be  char- 
itable to  regard  the  paretic  dementia  from  which  Sampson  finally 
died,  with  its  grand  delusions,  as  responsible  for  much  of  Samp- 
son's behavior,  but  what  justification  has  the  navy  department? 
Jervis  wrote  finally :  "Commodore  Nelson,  who  was  in  the  rear 
on  the  starboard  tack,  took  the  lead  on  the  larboard  and  contrib- 
uted very  much  to  the  fortune  of  the  day."  Completely  ignoring 
the  fact  that  Nelson  had  decided  the  day  at  Cape  St.  Vincent. 

"Horatio  Nelson.  W.  C  Russell,  p.  'jy,  Mahan,  Life  of  Nelson,  VoL 
I,  p.  281. 


558  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Mahan  (p.  151,  op.  cit.)  speaks  in  his  mild  way  of  Lord  Hood 
having  inadequately  mentioned  Nelson's  services  in  Corsica. 

Gulliver  captured  the  navy  of  Blufuscu  and  the  courtiers  of 
Lilliputia  conspired  to  have  his  eyes  put  out  and  to  condemn  him 
to  starvation.  Gen.  Fitz  John  Porter,  it  is  said,  was  made  a 
scapegoat  for  Gen.  Pope's  reverses,  and  dismissed  in  disgrace, 
though  acquitted  years  afterward,  in  spite  of  his  enemies  follow- 
ing him  with  bitter  political  hate.  Cortez  was  conspired  against 
in  his  army  in  Spain,  in  Cuba  and  when  he  went  to  Honduras.  The 
treason  trial  and  unjust  condemnation  of  Admiral  Hon.  John 
Byng  was  referred  to  by  Gen.  Sebert  in  the  Dreyfus  trial,  as  an 
instance  of  an  innocent  man  being  executed.  Byng  was  born  in 
1704,  and  executed  in  Gibraltar  in  1757.  The  French  said  that 
Byng  was  shot  as  a  traitor,  but  the  English  claim  that  he  was 
acquitted  of  treason,  but  shot  for  incapacity,  though  thousands 
have  escaped  his  charge  even  when  guilty.  Pitt  tried  to  save 
him,  as  the  government  had  merely  given  Byng  rotten  ships.  It 
was  the  government  that  was  incapable  and  sacrificed  Byng  as  a 
scapegoat.  It  is  an  old  political  trick  to  divert  any  inquiry  of  this 
kind  into  personalities,  and  thus  call  away  attention  from  the  real 
subject. 

Sixtus  IV,  the  reigning  pope,  ordered  a  conspiracy  to  kill  the 
Medici  of  Florence.  A  soldier  had  too  superstitious  a  reverence 
for  the  church  to  enable  him  to  assassinate  at  the  very  altar,  so 
two  priests  agreed  to  undertake  the  deed  and  Machiavelli^^  says 
that  the  partial  failure  was  due  to  hardened,  experienced  murder- 
ers not  having  been  employed.  Guilliamo  de  Medici  was  stabbed 
to  death,  but  his  brother  Lorenzo  escaped  and  fought  the  priests 
till  his  assistants  came  to  his  aid.  The  Archbishop  Salviati  was 
hanged  for  the  conspiracy  by  the  mob,  who  favored  de  Medici. 
Pisistratus  of  Athens  and  the  Medici  of  Florence  were  cruel 
tyrants,  but  beloved  by  the  citizens. 

The  attempt  of  Germany  to  intrigue  with  Spain  by  making  a 
pretense  of  hostile  display  against  the  Americans  at  Manila  is  re- 
membered, the  object  being  to  enable  Germany  to  purchase  some 

"  Political  Discourses,  Bk.  Ill,  p.  6. 


SOCIOLOGY. 


559 


islands  of  Spain  and  at  the  same  time  avoid  a  war  with  the  Uniteci 
States. 

Wilhelm  menaced  Httle  Hayti  and  imposed  an  indemnity,  for 
a  police  brawl  affair,  which  he  would  not  dare  to  mention  to  a 
stronger  country.  He  helped  the  Chinese  against  Japan,  the 
Turks  against  the  Greeks,  the  Spaniards  in  the  Philippines  against 
the  Americans,  and  the  Boers. against  the  English  in  Sx)Uth  Africa, 
yet  he  collapses  when  openly  assailed.  He  acts  like  a  bullying 
school  boy  or  an  epileptic. 

Kriiger  fought  his  own  people,  intrigued  against  President 
Burger  and  ousted  him  and  marched  on  Bloemfontein  to  take  the 
Orange  Free  State.  He  escaped  from  South  Africa  and  left  his 
wife,  who  died  there,  while  enjoying  his  ease  in  Holland.  Much 
of  his  career  resembles  the  capering  of  a  great  baboon. 

All  of  Henry  the  First's  schemes  for  his  succession  fell  to 
pieces  at  his  death,  as  the  courtiers  thought  nothing  of  such  little 
things  as  vows,  perjury  and  breaking  faith. 

Stephen  got  a  servant  to  swear  falsely  that  Henry  I  had  named 
him  as  his  heir,  whereupon  the  archbishop  of  Canterbury  crowned 
him,  an  instance  of  manufacturing  evidence  similar  to  what  is 
secured  in  some  murder  trials  by  ambitious  police  and  jailers 
who  are  anxious  to  get  the  credit  of  securing  testimony,  even 
though  the  prisoner  may  not  be  guilty. 

Oath  breaking  was  easy  enough  for  kings  and  courtiers.  John 
and  Henry  HI  swore  readily  and  seldom  kept  an  oath  or  vow. 
The  latter  agreed  to  confirm  the  liberties  of  England  if  parlia- 
ment voted  a  large  amount.  As  soon  aS  Henry  had  the  money 
he  defied  propriety  again. 

Ireland  was  betrayed  by  King  Donald  to  the  English  under 
Henry  H,  and  Wallace  was  betrayed  to  the  English  by  a  Scotch 
attendant  in  Edward  Fs  day. 

Under  Henry  VHI  England  made  a  blundering  alliance  with 
Spain,  and  was  taken  in  by  that  country,  which  left  England  in 
the  lurch  and  made  its  own  terms  with  France. 

The  gunpowder  plotters  against  parliament  tried  to  raise  the 
Catholics  against  James,  but  were  repulsed,  probably  because 
enlightenment  was  greater  by  that  time.  History  serves  some 
purpose  in  keeping  people  advised  of  the  folly  of  the  past. 


560  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Parasitism  is  living  at  the  expense  of  another  without  destroy- 
ing it  or  doing  it  service.  The  tapeworm  is  not  likely  to  outlive 
its  host,  hence  it  cannot  advantage  by  destroying  it.  Domestica- 
tion borders  on  slavery,  and  the  master  may  become  parasitic 
upon  the  slave,  as  the  red  ants  upon  the  black,  becoming  helpless 
without  them.  But  there  may  be  reciprocal  association,  as  in  mu- 
tualism. Certain  parasitic  plants,  as  the  mistletoe,  take  from  the 
host  only  the  water  and  inorganic  substances  derived  from  the 
soil.  Others,  like  the  dodder,  dispense  with  roots  and  leaves 
and  abstract  the  living  matter  of  plants.  Parasites  do  not  need 
a  high  organization,  and  hence  do  not  develop  one.  Mimetic 
parasitism  is  where  an  animal  or  plant  imitates  another  to  be  able 
to  approach  victims,  and  is  thus  a  hypocrite  and  demagogue. 
Others  mimic  stronger  species  to  be  able  to  escape  enemies. 

Sinecurists  and  beggars  are  parasites.  Those  who  live  on 
waste  products  are  saprophytes  of  society,  and  those  who  steal 
are  predatory.  Mutualists  render  an  equivalent  for  what  they 
get. 

In  Rome  a  community  began  as  farmers  and  ended  in  being 
parasites,  the  populace  being  fed  by  the  provinces  and  the  rich 
depending  upon  slaves.  Tenants  who  fail  to  pay  rent  are  para- 
sitic on  landlords,  but  others  of  that  class  turn  robber  and  so  keep 
even. 

Washington,  D.  C,  is  filled  with  human  parasites,  not  only  in 
civil  but  in  military  and  naval  circles.  A  senator  made  it  a  point 
to  never  believe  the  most  plausible  stories  of  these  schemers.  All 
of  Washington  society  is  honeycombed  with  jobbers  who  get  soft 
places  in  service.  Schley  was  a  "sailor-man,"  one  who  preferred 
active  duty  to  soft  seats  in  Washington.  Crowninshield  and 
others  intrigued  with  politician  Long  for  easy  places.  Every 
place  in  life  swarms  with  parasites  who,  like  the  "coffee-coolers" 
of  W^ashington,  appropriate  the  pay  and  honors  intended  for 
merit  and  impudently  ask :  "What  are  you  going  to  do  about 
it?"  Some  of  these  hunters  for  positions  have  been  known  to 
even  prostitute  their  own  wives  in  their  search  for  soft  places. 
The  honest  rank  and  file  of  workers  are  too  busy  attending  to 
duty  to  understand  what  menaces  them.      Intriguery  turns  out 


SOCIOLOGY.  561 

the  efficient  and  puts  in  the  inefficient  one,  who  has  the  adroitness 
to  hang  onto  the  job  whether  he  otherwise  fills  the  place  or  not. 

Goldsmith  says  there  is  a  great  deal  of  friendliness  in  the 
world  for  those  who  have  become  successful,  but  the  rich  are 
beset  by  parasites,  false  friends,  charlatans  and  flatterers  who 
turn  them  against  those  who  have  no  designs  upon  them.  Often 
these  parasites  adopt  an  armistice  among  themselves,  and  agree 
to  attack  new  comers.  Thus  the  wealthy  never  see  life  as  it 
really  is,  unless  they  lose  their  means,  and  then  they  are  bewil- 
dered, for  their  fictitious  world  has  gone  with  their  resources. 

The  poor  when  rich  forsake  old  friends  and  make  new  ones, 
who  abandon  them  on  their  becoming  poor  again.  The  poor  are 
subject  to  dangers  from  which  the  rich  think  they  escape,  but 
wealth  attracts  new  sources  of  danger  in  intriguery  for  its  pos- 
session. 

An  instance  of  social  parasitism  was  where  a  medical  student 
was  absent  from  home  trying  to  earn  enough  to  go  through  col- 
lege, but  a  minister  ingratiated  himself  and  relatives  into  the 
family  of  the  student  and  literally  ate  him  up,  so  that  he  had  to 
work  another  year  to  make  up  for  his  being  digested  sacerdotally. 

Endeavors  to  rid  a  community  of  parasites  are  not  always  wise 
as  weeds  introduced  from  abroad  as  useful  or  ornamental  have 
become  harmful,  as  the  chicory,  wild  onion  and  water  hyacinth. 
Likewise,  birds  and  other  animals  introduced  to  exterminate  pests 
become  in  time  by  their  increase  or  bad  habits,  worse  than  the 
original  nuisance.  The  mongoose  was  brought  from  India  to 
Jamaica  to  destroy  rats,  and  after  eating  the  rats  it  destroyed 
domestic  and  farm  animals,  fruits  and  vegetables.  A  gypsy 
moth  ravaged  Massachusetts  trees,  and  the  politicians  made  it  the 
pretext  of  robbing  the  state  funds,  in  some  cases  cultivating  nests 
of  moths  for  the  bounty  offered  by  the  government. 

Half  of  England  and  Wales  belongs  to  4,500  persons,  half  of 
Ireland  to  744,  and  half  of  Scotland  to  70.^^  Six  owned  half  of 
Africa  in  the  Roman  Empire.  Even  Trinity  Church,  New  York, 
is  parasitic,  and  owns  brothels.  Westminster  Abbey  and  White 
Chapel  funds  own  immense  real  estate  properties,  which  they  do 
not  improve.     In  1788  there  were  1,221,000  parasitic  priests,  no- 

"Karl  Marx. 


562  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

bles,  officials  and  soldiers  upon  3,800,000  people  in  Spain.  One 
person  supported  three.  Politicians  are  parasitic  upon  the  pub- 
lic. Systems  may  be  parasitic  and  force  otherwise  better  persons 
to  minister  to  them.  A  building  society  may  stop  the  parasitism 
of  speculators  in  houses  for  working  people.  Co-operative  so- 
cieties may  dispense  with  the  parasitic  middle  man,  but  the  de- 
partment store  develops  to  crush  the  small  trader.  Hope  can  be 
founded  upon  the  fact  that  no  one  is  born  a  social  parasite,  neces- 
sarily, but  he  acquires  that  character  which  is  not  transmitted. 
Society  is  enfeebled  by  the  parasite,  and  it,  in  turn,  degenerates. 
Poor  organization  multiplies  parasitism. 

Julian  Gordon^®  says,  ''Entire  families  as  well  as  individuals 
belong  to  the  group  parasitic.  They  possess  a  mixture  of  servil- 
ity and  audacity  which  diverts.  These  are  the  men  and  women 
who  shine  in  reflected  splendors.  They  drive  other  people's 
coaches,  sail  other  people's  yachts,  get  other  people  to  pay  for  the 
parties  they  give,  use  their  acquaintances  as  banks,  as  profitable 
investments.  A  lady  who  belonged  to  this  class  went  to  visit 
friends  in  New  Hampshire.  A  few  days  after  her  arrival  she 
gave  birth  to  a  baby.  Her  hosts  took  upon  themselves  all  the 
expenses  of  the  performance,  stood  sponsors  for  the  child,  and 
even  settled  something  upon  it.  They  said  its  mamma  had  made 
herself  so  agreeable.  To  be  an  accomplished  parasite  one  must 
have  peculiar  aptitudes,  a  great  deal  of  suppleness,  plenty  of  un- 
scrupulousness,  a  tough  hide.  No  born  leader  ever  followed  suc- 
cessfully. The  rebellion  of  natural  imperiousness,  the  revolt  of 
pride,  the  anguish  of  wounded  sensibility,  have  no  place  with 
these  delightful  wheedlers.  As  we  have  said,  they  are  perhaps, 
nay  probably,  attractive.  They  fill  their  niche.  They  are  even 
necessary." 

It  was  a  favorite  idea  of  Pasteur's  that  it  is  in  the  power  of 
men  to  cause  all  parasitic  diseases  to  disappear  from  the  world. 
He  had  destroyed  the  grape  vine  disease  and  chicken  cholera  and 
added  greatly  to  our  means  of  combating  filth  diseases,  but  the 
term  parasite  is  quite  broad  logically,  and  from  that  stand- 
point man  himself  is  a  parasite  on  the  earth's  surface.     Hebra  be- 

"  Cosmopolitan,  Dec.  1901. 


SOCIOLOGY.  563 

lieved  that  many  of  the  afflictions  of  the  Israelites  mentioned  in 
the  old  testament  were  nothing  more  than  the  itch,  which  is  a 
small  living  parasite,  the  proper  name  for  which  is  Sarcoptes 
scabiei,  which  Hahnemann,  the  originator  of  homoeopathy,  taught 
was  the  cause  of  all  diseases,  so  that  a  millionth  of  a  grain  of  an 
itch  mite,  on  the  similia  similibus  theory,  would  cure  all  diseases. 
Yet  some  think  we  are  not  related  to  monkeys  in  intelligence. 
Tape  worms,  trichina,  etc.,  infest  men,  hogs  and  other  omnivor- 
ous animals,  sometimes  developing  partly  in  one  animal  and  finally 
in  another,  by  stages. 

Thread  worms  pass  through  beetles  and  develop  later  in  pigs, 
some  are  in  shrimps  and  then  in  fish,  others  begin  in  beetles  and 
find  their  way  through  hamsters  and  voles,  and  some  in  water 
shrimp  and  then  in  ducks.  The  sexes  of  thread  worms  are  gener- 
ally distinct.  Vinegar  eels  are  thread  worms  living  in  fungi  in 
paste  or  vinegar,  but  owing  to  chemicals  other  than  wine  or  beer 
being  used  in  making  vinegar,  these  eels  are  seen  less  now. 
There  is  a  wheat  eel  and  a  turnip  eel. 

Man  plants  and  animals  are  parasitic  on  the  earth  and  every- 
thing depends  upon  something  else.  The  monkey  is  a  tree  para- 
site, the  tree  on  the  soil,  the  vine  on  the  tree,  and  all  are  parasitic 
upon  the  earth. 

What  protects  one  from  certain  classes  of  predatory  or  para- 
sitic organisms  invites  the  assaults  of  others.  The  student  who 
avoids  social  entanglements,  for  instance,  escapes  much  trouble, 
but  makes  new  ones  for  himself.  His  obscurity  may  be  taken  ad- 
vantage of  to  steal  his  work  and  revile  him  if  he  dare  to  protest. 
To  oppress  him  by  taking  advantage  of  his  carelessness  and  lack 
of  social  intriguery. 

Parasites  desert  the  bankrupt  as  rats  do  a  drowning  ship. 
Shakespeare  notes  that  "The  great  man  down,  you  mark  his  fa- 
vorite flies.  The  poor  advanced  makes  friends  of  enemies," 
meaning  that  the  parasite  drops  away  when  its  nourishment  is 
threatened,  and  even  previously  hostile  sycophants  become  friend- 
ly with  the  recently  fortunate. 

Priests  may  be  mutualists,  predatory  or  parasitic,  individually, 
but  the  entire  clerical  system  in  this  age  is  parasite  upon  the  com- 


564  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

miinity,  for  it  lives  upon  the  superstition  and  hopes  of  the  people, 
and  gives  vague  promises  in  return.  Individual  cases  may  change 
this,  as  when  a  cleric  renders  valuable  services  to  an  ignorant 
community  and  it  rewards  him  basely. 

The  living  together  or  mutual  interdependence  of  animals  is 
designated  symbiosis,  that  between  the  wolf  and  badger  has  been 
described  .^^  Mutualists  have  been  mistaken  for  parasities  some- 
times, as  the  lice  on  fowls  which  clean  up  epithelial  areas. 

The  crocodile  bird  visits  his  host  to  pick  his  teeth  and  tongue 
free  from  leeches.  Buphugas,  the  surgeon  bird,  opens  cysts  on 
buffalo  and  removes  the  larvae ;  the  European  starling  picks  the 
backs  of  cattle.  Feathers  and  scales  are  sometimes  kept  bright  by 
so-called  parasites  on  birds  and  fish.  Jas.  Weir,  Jr.,  describes  an 
organism  that  eats  decayed  and  unimpregnated  crayfish  eggs,  so  a 
parasitic  mutualist  is  thus  possible. 

The  elands  are  accompanied  by  rhinoceros  birds,  which  watch 
over  them  and  give  them  the  alarm  when  an  enemy  is  near. 

The  hawfinch  destroys  noxious  insects,  but  also  steals  peas 
from  the  kitchen  garden.  So  in  many  cases  the  relations  of  ani- 
mals with  each  other  may  be  harmful,  beneficial  and  sometimes  a 
mixture  of  both. 

The  coachman  fly  which  destroys  the  horse  fly  is  said  to  be 
welcomed  by  the  horse,  and  may  sit  on  any  part  of  him,  while  the 
horse  fly  makes  him  nervous  and  restive. 

The  cuckoo  is  a  notorious  parasite  upon  other  birds,  laying 
his  eggs  among  strangers  and  leaving  them  to  be  hatched  by 
them,  and  the  young  cuckoos  ungratefully  may  cast  out  the  eggs 
of  their  foster  parents. 

Hermit  crabs  in  occupying  cast-off  shells  of  mollusks  are  to  a 
certain  degree  parasitic,  at  least  upon  abandoned  domiciles. 

Hyenas  were  dependent  upon  lions  for  their  food,  but  their  in- 
crease near  the  haunts  of  men  show  that  hyenas  regard  man  as  a 
better  destroyer  and  purveyor  than  the  lion. 

Pilot  fish  swim  in  front  of  sharks  and  accompany  vessels  for 
the  feeding  obtained. 

The  honey  guide  is  a  bird  that  leads  man  to  the  hives  of  honey 

"American  Naturalist,  June,  1884,  p.  644. 


SOCIOLOGY.  565 

bees  in  forests.     It  merely  seeks  the  grubs  or  the  young  bees. 

The  Langur  monkeys  chase  tigers  and  point  to  them  and 
scream  at  them  to  aid  the  hunter  to  find  them,  and  they  recognize 
men  as  alHes  and  friends. 

Society  among  men  is  founded  upon  mutualism  with  a  very 
large  history  of  parasitic  "nobility"  and  priesthood.  ''Trade 
never  was  considered  a  degradation  in  Catalonia,  as  it  was  in  Cas- 
tile," says  Prescott,^^  hence  the  Catalonians  are  a  finer,  manlier 
race  than  the  majority  of  the  ignorant  priest-ridden  Spanish. 

A  phase  of  mutualism  is  the  potency  of  propinquity,  being  near 
to  help  or  influence.  The  vulgar  idea  in  destiny  controlling  mar- 
riages, etc.,  is  met  by  showing  that  nearness  in  everything.  "The 
absent  is  always  in  the  wrong"  is  one  old  saw,  while  Saadi,  the 
Persian  poet,  sings,  "Nearest  to  the  king  is  dearest,  be  thy  station 
high  or  low."  The  adjacent  furnish  husbands  and  wives,  and  it 
is  the  nearest  that  afford  friends.  Often  next  door  neighbors  find 
much  congeniality  and  become  lifelong  friends,  where  had  it  not 
been  for  this  adjacency  they  could  not  have  known  each  other. 

Whether  to  beg,  to  work,  to  steal,  there  must  be  adjacency. 
The  ivy  clings  to  the  nearest  wall  and  the  other  parasites  depend 
upon  the  nearest  support,  things  trite  enough,  only  there  is  such 
prevalent  superstition  about  people  being  thrown  together  pur- 
posely instead  of  by  accident. 

Distance  and  time  dim  affection  between  relatives  and  friends, 
and  it  is  seldom  realized  that  absence  is  liable  to  undo  the  work 
of  years  of  intimacy. 

Darwin's  statement  of  female  dogs  often  throwing  themselves 
away  oh  curs  of  low  degree  is  similar  to  the  fact  that  girls  run  off 
with  their  fathers'  coachmen  and  teachers  may  marry  Chinamen, 
through  the  same  propinquity  and  familiarity  that  causes  dogs  to 
select  mates  outside  of  their  station  in  life. 

By  recollecting  that  "no  man  or  measure  can  be  wholly  right 
or  wholly  wrong,"  as  Spencer  says,  and  further  that  good  and 
evil,  as  generally  understood,  both  combined  and  separately 
evolve,  organize  and  in  time  give  way  to  new  methods,  combina- 
tions and  workings,  there  will  be  less  confusion  in  endeavors  to 
lessen  the  friction  of  civilized  living. 

"  History  of  Ferdinand  and  Isabella. 


566  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

No  new  plan  for  the  improvement  of  business  or  of  those  em- 
ployed can  be  free  from  inconvenience  or  even  downright  suffer- 
ing to  others.  A  child  cannot  be  born  without  blood  loss,  nor  an 
organization  without  tearing  away  from  previous  established  con- 
ditions. Often  the  newly  instituted  affair  will  prove  of  great 
general  benefit  while  damaging  a  few  who  are  deprived  of  former 
methods  of  earning.  But  with  all  this  the  intent  of  the  organiza- 
tion may  have  been  rapacious  and  cruel  in  the  extreme,  and  coun- 
ter efforts  may  also  be  unlawful  and  injurious  to  others  until  a 
compromise  is  effected  and  adjustment  secured  on  the  new  basis 
of  working. 

Trusts  are  inevitable,  and  resemble  the  tendency  of  nature  in 
the  evolution  of  the  nervous  system  for  the  higher  or  more  com- 
plex centres  to  usurp  the  functions  of  the  lower,  and  also  to  estab- 
lish better  correlations  of  all  parts  of  the  organism.  It  is  a  selfish 
method  and  part  of  the  grab  game  of  the  universe,  but  it  eventu- 
ates in  usefulness  to  the  aggregation  and  incidentally  to  the  indi- 
vidual. 

Until  recently  but  little  thought  has  been  given  to  those  "vital 
processes  of  spontaneous  co-operation"  by  which  national  life, 
growth  and  progress  have  been  carried  on;  all  thoughts  being 
turned  to  the  actions  of  rulers. 

The  differences  between  such  a  colony  as  that  of  the  polyp- 
corals  and  separate  individuals  are  merely  those  of  the  quantity 
of  units  clinging  together  or  separating,  but  when  we  analyze  the 
individual  we  find  him  made  up  of  parts  that  are  combined  to 
work  together,  so  that  after  all  the  colony  is  an  individual,  and 
the  individual  is  a  colony,  the  only  difference  is  in  the  stopping 
place  of  further  combinations.  A  community  cannot  cohere, 
much  less  advance,  unless  it  combines,  and  history  proves  that 
the  most  practical  combinations  are  those  founded  upon  utter 
selfishness,  for  it  is  an  animus  readily  understood  by  all  man- 
kind, and  derived  from  the  ingrained  nature  of  all  men  and  all 
animals,  with  the  advantage  that  if  any  change  is  likely  it  will  be 
for  the  better,  whereas  institutions  founded  upon  generosity  are 
more  than  liable  to  tumble  into  degeneracy  by  corruptions  of  the 
selfish  exploiters. 

In  1901  a  vaudeville  trust  formed  on  a  bad  basis,  which  gave 


SOCIOLOGY.  567 

the  power  to  select  actors  into  the  hands  of  one  man,  who  proved 
to  be  grossly  incompetent  and  malicious,  resulting  in  lowering  the 
standard  of  talent  on  the  stage,  but  the  uproar  that  followed 
overturned  this  bad  condition  of  things,  and  both  actors  and  man- 
agers profitted  by  the  changes  evolved. 

The  unsophisticated  think  that  people  are  combined  in  business 
for  ideal  purposes,  whereas  some  real  interest  associates  them. 
It  is  natural  to  think  that  charitable  institutions  are  ideal,  founded 
and  conducted  by  generosity  and  mercy.  The  founder  usually 
wants  to  perpetuate  his  name,  or  his  motives  may  be  superstitious 
ones,  and  the  place  is  most  often  run  by  a  scrambling,  traducing, 
selfish  horde  of  wire  pullers,  schemers  and  grabbers,  intent  upon 
money,  position,  power  or  influence.  Life  in  a  hospital  will  dis- 
close the  natures  of  those  highest  in  control  to  be  most  often  re- 
voltingly  selfish  and  hypocritical,  while  among  the  underlings  will 
be  found  very  excellent  men  and  motives,  but  such  are  least  fitted 
to  survive  in  an  atmosphere  of  combinations,  liars  and  haters  of 
superiority. 

Combinations  tend  to  increase  the  wages  of  labor  if  labor  is 
alive  to  its  own  interests,  while  cheapening  the  cost  of  necessities 
as  well  as  luxuries  to  the  consumer.  Roswell  P.  Flower  holds 
that  "if  the  Standard  Oil  Company  tried  to  make  ^  or  ^  cent 
a  gallon  there  would  be  competitors  in  the  field.  It  is  satisfied 
with  %  cent,  so  it  controls  the  market  and  sells  all  over  the 
world."  But  the  company  compromises  between  raising  prices 
too  high  and  missing  its  opportunities,  by  rapid  raises  far  over  the 
limit  set  by  Flower,  but  following  with  a  drop  that  would  discour- 
age competition.  The  sole  motive  of  a  big  organization,  such  as 
that,  is  to  get  everything  it  can,  and  the  sole  deterrent,  its  only 
conscience,  is  the  fear  that  its  future  grasp  might  be  shaken  were 
it  to  raise  prices  too  high.  It  need  not  be  for  an  instant  thought 
that  there  is  any  intention  to  benefit  the  people  on  the  part  of  the 
organization  ;  that  is  purely  incidental  and  often  undesirable.  Most 
combinations  in  nature  are  of  that  kind.  The  only  reason  the 
stomach  lets  the  intestines  have  anything  is  because  it  cannot  di- 
gest all,  and  the  intestines  reluctantly  yield  to  the  circulation  what 
it  cannot  use  up  for  itself,  biit  the  result  is  that  all  organs  are  nour- 


568  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ished  by  the  blood  thus  selfishly  made,  just  as  well  as  though  the 
process  had  been  a  voluntary  one. 

Organization  may  be  in  co-operation  for  distribution  or  for 
consumption,  for  production,  for  banking  or  saving,  and  if  those 
who  contemplate  these  sorts  of  combinations  will  study  the  past 
they  can  derive  valuable  hints  for  proceeding.  Usually  the  selfish 
methods  need  little  study,  but  when  philanthropy  makes  an  en- 
deavor it  seldom  goes  to  the  records  of  past  attempts  but  ventures 
boldly  upon  a  sea  that  numbers  more  wrecks  than  safe  voyages. 

Tammany  has  a  wonderfully  strong  and  efficient  organization 
based  on  pure  selfishness,  as  utter  as  though  the  members  were 
bandits,  and  in  reality  they  are,  with  reference  to  the  community  it 
preys  upon.  Were  it  possible  to  make  so  powerful  a  corporation 
to  benefit,  instead  of  to  rob,  communities,  as  much  good  might 
result  as  Tammany  does  harm.  But  fancy  blackmail  being  used 
to  accomplish  good  ends.  Any  sort  of  society,  no  matter  what  its 
aims,  is  more  than  likely  to  fall  into  the  hands  of  fools  or  rascals, 
and  its  original  objects  be  completely  forgotten,  ignored,  or  re- 
versed. Spencer  notes  the  tendency  of  societies  to  eventually  sub- 
vert the  very  objects  for  which  they  were  founded. 

The  usual  secret  society  varies  in  its  efifects  upon  the  com- 
munity for  good  or  harm.  Indeed,  the  same  order  may  have 
branches  of  opposite  natures.  Some  lodges  run  to  parade  and 
hysteria.  One  spends  a  large  sum  on  funerals  and  gives  nothing 
to  the  widows ;  others  educate  the  orphans,  and  still  other  socie- 
ties likfe  the  crusading  Templars  of  England  and  the  Janissaries 
of  Turkey  merit  the  destruction  that  overtook  th«m. 

State  employment  bureaus  facilitate  the  securing  of  places, 
l)ut  of  course  as  these  favor  the  unorganized  who  have  no  influ- 
ence with  legislators,  and  as  the  average  employment  agency  will 
fall  into  disuse  and  lose  its  fees,  usually  made  at  the  cost  of  wrong 
and  suffering  by  charging  in  advance  for  places  which  are  not 
secured,  there  is  passivity  of  law  making  in  this  line,  with  active 
opposition  of  the  selfish  employment  agent  and  apathy  on  the  part 
of  the  citizen. 

Among  many  needs  for  better  organization  of  medical  men 
appears  the  corrupt  legislation  secured  by  quacks,  who  buy  up 
legislators  to  enable  them  to  rob  and     murder  the  people  unin- 


SOCIOLOGY.  569 

formed  in  medical  matters.  Physicians  should  also  recognize  the 
fact  that  surgeons  are  poor  prescribers  and  poor  diagnosticians, 
outside  of  cases  requiring  surgery,  and  often  this  latter  is  resorted 
to  improperly  because  occasionally  the  surgeon  has  made  a  mis- 
take in  diagnosis.  Surgeons  concentrate  their  attention  upon 
their  special  field  and  cannot  find  time  to  develop  in  medical  lines, 
any  department  of  which  is  a  life  study.  More  soldiers  during 
war  die  of  disease  than  are  killed  by  wounds,  yet  surgeons  are 
selected  rather  than  physicians,  when  both  branches  of  medicine 
should  be  employed.  The  following  figures  show  the  relative 
numbers  killed  and  those  who  died  by  disease  during  wars  : 

Crimea,  4,602  killed,  17,600  died  from  disease,  English  side. 

Civil  war,  93,969  killed,  186,216  died  from  disease,  on  Union 
side. 

Spanish  war,  454  killed,  5,277  died  from  disease,  American 
side. 

African,  3,000  killed,  6,000  died  from  disease,  English  side. 

Approximately,  from  the  best  accessible  statistics,  which  if 
faulty  numerically  are  not  liable  to  be  in  regard  to  the  relative 
proportions  of  deaths  by  wounds  and  disease. 

Gigantic  combinations  are  being  daily  arranged  in  the  United 
States  and  the  pronounced  expression  of  the  voters  in  Chicago  and 
elsewhere  for  municipal  ownership  shows  that  a  sociological  gov- 
ernment is  dawning,  for  trusts  will  pass  finally  and  naturally  into 
the  government  control,  and  as  the  initiative  and  referendum  is 
also  demanded,  the  present  liability  to  corrupt  administration  will 
be  greatly  lessened  and  civil  service  administration,  when  jealously 
looked  after  by  the  people  to  keep  it  out  of  the  hands  of  profes- 
sional politicians,  will  make  the  coming  government  much  better. 

The  government  may  thus  make  a  syndicate  of  trusts,  but  pre- 
vious to  this  there  may  be  formed  groups  of  such  combinations, 
a  developed  aggregation  of  them  for  trade  purposes.  A  bro- 
kerage of  trust  stock,  such  as  sugar,  coffee,  matches,  railway,  etc., 
may  finally  pool,  so  as  to  afford  a  certain  and  safe  income  J:o  the 
investor  in  the  heterogeneous  thus  made  homogeneous.  One 
stock  may  be  at  200,  another  at  98  and  so  on.  The  brokers  who 
combine  to  prevent  loss  to  investors,  taking  their  profits  currently, 
may  be  supplanted  by  government,  and  the  result  will  be  even 


570  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

better  than  what  exists  in  New  Zealand,  where  some  very  good 
legislation  enables  prevention  of  sharky  methods,  saving  the  poor 
from  being  imposed  upon,  hence  none  becomes  very  rich  or  very 
poor. 

But  an  unenlightened  people  cannot  be  protected  against  the 
results  of  ignorance,  for  the  inevitable  scoundrel  will  find  some 
way  to  enslave  them,  and  there  is  necessity  to  exert  self-control, 
such  as  France  seldom  displayed  when  her  government  grew 
weak.  As  Spencer  says :  "If  the  sentiment  of  subordination  be- 
comes enfeebled  without  self-control  gaining  in  strength  propor- 
tionately there  arises  a  danger  of  social  dissolution." 

Some  of  the  progress  secured  through  division  of  labor  may  be 
recognized  when  a  person  has  developed  in  one  line  of  work  and 
is  suddenly  forced  into  another  line,  even  though  unpleasant  for 
him,  the  world  receives  the  benefit  of  the  change,  as  it  brings  to  a 
new  field  methods  from  the  old  one,  which  otherwise  would  not 
have  been  secured;  so  as  in  the  case  of  a  machinist  turning  car- 
penter or  a  chemist  becoming  a  farmer,  new  ideas  and  processes 
start  the  world  ofif  on  a  more  developed  plane.  The  heteroge- 
neous becomes  integrated  anew. 

Organization  is  inevitable  for  among  a  passive  people  some 
are  brazen  enough  to  lead,  the  rest  follow  the  clamor  rather  than 
reason,  often  against  reason. 

Vigilance  may  ensure  liberty.  The  French  provinces  that  rose 
against  the  salt  tax  were  let  alone ;  friends  who  visit  patients  in  the 
worst  political  insane  asylums  or  hospitals  protect  them  from 
abuse.  Systems  that  guard  money  are  more  likely  to  prevent 
theft  than  trusting  to  general  honesty.  Clients  who  handle  their 
own  money  instead  of  letting  lawyers  do  it,  and  authors  who  pub- 
lish their  own  books,  are  more  likely  to  secure  what  may  be  due 
them.  Municipalities  organized  against  subsidy  grabbers  are  apt 
to  escape  looting. 

A  set  of  miscreants  may  be  organized  and  succeed  in  robbing 
the  people  in  their  particular  way,  but  through  jealousy  or  to  call 
away  attention  from  their  own  operations,  they  are  pointing  to 
other  methods  of  wrong  doing,  just  as  a  sensational  newspaper 
advertises  quacks  and  patent  medicines,  but  editorially  adopts  a 
high  moral  tone.     Go  to  a  newspaper  proprietor  and  ask  him  to 


SOCIOLOGY.  571 

refuse  a  murderous,  debauching  quack  medicine  advertisement, 
and  he  will  gaze  at  you  astonished  at  your  impudence  or  fool  re- 
form notions.  Another  newspaper  proprietor  every  particle  as 
'cruel  and  selfish  may  denounce  the  nostrum  as  dangerous,  if  he 
knows  enough,  if  he  cannot  blackmail  the  quack  into  giving  him 
an  advertisement.  So  intelligence  may,  in  the  absence  of  moral- 
ity, here  and  there  lift  the  condition  of  the  common  people. 

In  the  thirteenth  century  trade,  merchant  and  craft  guilds  in 
England  instituted  terrible  class  oppression  and  robbery  of  the 
poor.  The  continent  also  had  its  fierce  struggle  of  this  kind. 
The  crafty  few  enslaving  the  simple  many.  In  Koln  the  crafts- 
men had  been  reduced  to  almost  serfage.  This  tyranny  of  class 
over  class  brought  a  century  of  bloodshed  to  Germany. 

In  1902  the  city  of  Chicago  gave  police  protection  to  the  meat 
trust  against  the  striking  teamsters ;  the  trust  raised  the  price  of 
meat  and  practically  lowered  the  teamsters'  wages,  whereupon  the 
Chicago  Federation  of  Labor  accused  the  packers  of  conspiracy 
to  rob  the  community,  claiming  that  for  many  years  the  meat 
packers  had  tapped  the  public  mains  and  stolen  the  city  water, 
evading  equitable  assessments  of  the  property  by  bribing  officials, 
furnishing  rotten  meat  to  the  soldiers  in  our  late  war  with  Spain. 

Many  animals,  as  in  some  instances  the  crows,  have  organizing 
power,  drilling  their  young  and  making  pilgrimages  together, 
though  such  things  are  common  to  other  species  as  well.  Mau- 
rice Maeterlinck^^  tells  of  the  bee  community  regulating  the  num- 
ber of  births,  controlling  the  policy  of  the  queen,  and  preventing 
her  from  murdering  her  own  offspring,  but  in  times  of  hunger  the 
workers  may  slay  the  whole  imperial  brood.  Division  of  labor  is 
extreme  among  the  bees.  Unlike  the  Aryans,  who  drove  out  their 
young  to  find  new  homes,  the  old  bees  sometimes  leave  the  hive 
to  the  coming  generation  and  fly  to  new  fields  of  labor.  The  lazy 
drones  are  tolerated  as  the  only  males,  but  when  too  numerous 
are  conscientiously  slain  by  the  neuter  workers.  So  sex  becomes 
specialized  against  work.  The  breeding  business  exempts  the 
breeders  from  other  labor.  Ants  are  somewhat  similarly  organ- 
ized into  workers,  soldiers,  breeders  and  slaves,  with  domesticated 
aphides  or  plant  lice  for  cows. 
,      "  The  Life  of  the  Bee. 


^72  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

The  extreme  differentiation  of  labor  would  not  be  so  harmful 
hy  cramping  the  faculties  upon  some  special  narrow  line,  were 
the  laborer  permitted  to  profit  by  his  work  to  an  extent  enabling 
him  to  do  more  work  in  less  time  at  better  pay,  with  shorter  hours, 
enabling  him  to  develop  himself  intellectually. 

Nature  menders  would  do  well  to  look  on  and  observe  how 
sociology  evolves ;  step  by  step  the  unrest  of  the  unemployed 
fights  the  greed  of  the  employers.  Step  by  step  the  defalcation  of 
untrustworthy  employes  are  met  by  repressive  detective  insurance 
•organizations,  and  gradually  thief-catchers  rob  the  thieves  so 
much  that  the  latter  turn  honest  in  self-defense.  They  realize 
that  in  their  particular  cases  honesty  is  the  best  policy. 

Formerly  6  in  the  morning  to  6  at  night  was  the  wage-earner's 
time,  and  is  yet  for  many ;  now  8  to  5  includes  the  hours  for  some 
craftsmen,  an  improvement  brought  about  by  strikes  and  compro- 
mises, often  where  for  awhile  one  or  the  other  side  would  be  un- 
just or  too  exacting,  and  sometimes  both  sides  were  wrong,  until 
time  adjusted  matters,  whether  the  result  were  good  for  both 
sides  or  not.  But  there  are  millions  unreached  by  the  change,  be- 
cause the  fight  was  not  for  them. 

Industrial  disturbances  were  widespread  in  1895  to  1897,  and 
there  were  bread  riots  in  South  Italy  in  1898,  but  multitudes  of 
such  things,  as  Green  notes,^^  as  the  fights  of  the  guilds  for  su- 
premacy in  Italy  and  England,  practically  trusts,  with  labor  up- 
risings, date  from  the  earliest  times. 

An  agrarian  law  of  the  Romans  was  popularly  misunder- 
stood as  making  all  land  common  property.  The  public  lands 
only  were  distributed  by  agrarian  law,  and  these  were  originally 
conquered  lands.^^  But  much  of  this  suggested  holding  all  land 
in  common  is  a  proposed  reversion  to  far-off  savage  methods 
impossible  at  this  stage  to  adopt. 

The  agrarian  league  in  Germany  wants  the  state  to  buy  and 
sell  the  foreign  grain  and  to  fix  the  selling  price. 

The  platform  of  the  socialist  labor  party  accused  wealth  of 
enslaving  women  and  children.-^      This  arraignment  might  just 

'"  History  of  English  People,  p.  248. 

''  H.  G.  Lidell,  History  of  Rome,  Bk.  II,  Ch.  VHI. 

•^Larned's  History,  Vol.  VI,  pp.  6  and  9. 


SOCIOLOGY.  ^7  J 

as  well  have  been  carried  back  to  our  ancestry.  It  is  from  them 
we  have  inherited  the  disposition  to  enslave  when  we  can.  The 
poor  is  the  slave  because  wealth  is  the  more  powerful ;  nor  is  suf- 
ficient consideration  accorded  the  fact  that  slave  and  enslaver 
would  change  places  very  readily  if  their  opportunities  were  re- 
versed. Generally  the  poor  man  grown  rich  becomes  a  ready 
worker  of  slaves,  and  the  rich  man  grown  poor  is  as  easily  im- 
posed upon ;  therefore,  the  trouble  is  not  between  capital  and 
labor  so  much  as  it  is  inherent  in  the  animal  human  nature. 

The  blacklisting  by  railways  of  all  employes  of  the  American 
Railway  Union,  or  who  quit  work  during  the  big  strike  of  1894, 
resulted  in  the  refusal  of  employment  for  them  by  all  roads. 

Good  men  may  honestly  sustain  bad  systems,  and  bad  men 
may  be  in  good  systems.  It  is  the  system  that  is  usually  perni- 
cious, though  even  the  best  is  capable  of  perversion.  An  honest 
priest  may  do  good  to  his  flock  while  his  church  seeks  only  politi- 
cal success  and  wealth.  The  insurgent  order  of  junior  mechanics 
claims  that  the  old  order,  which  aimed  to  protect  public  schools 
from  plotting  Jesuits,  was  perverted  by  money  making  schemers. 

Both  sides  in  organizing  contests  are  often  grasping,  and  the 
well  meaning  are  made  to  suffer  for  the  malevolence  of  the  few 
rascals.  Sometimes  a  striker  may  maliciously  destroy  his  em- 
ployer's property — a  foolish  thing  to  do  from  any  point  of  view. 
Then  a  coal  trust  has  been  accused  of  blowing  up  its  own  prop- 
erty to  turn  the  tide  of  popular  sympathy  against  strikers  it  ac- 
cused of  felony. 

Some  employers  find  that  the  best  way  to  defeat  a  union  is  to 
pay  better  wages  and  give  shorter  hours  than  are  demanded  by 
the  union.  This  is  not  always  possible,  and  by  remembering  the 
beautiful  sameness  of  human  nature,  whether  exhibited  by  trusts, 
unions,  rich  or  poor,  capitalists  or  laborer,  the  good  or  bad  in 
each  may  be  looked  for,  rather  than  expecting  the  right  or  wrong 
to  be  all  on  one  side. 

A  very  long  step  toward  satisfactory  settlements  of  labor  and 
capital  disputes  was  made  in  New  Zealand  in  1894,  in  making 
arbitration  compulsory.  It  is  reported  that  the  very  best  condi- 
tions for  both  sides  have  sprung  from  the  method  in  practice. 


574  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

The  selfishness  of  both  parties  now  finds  remunerative  exercise  in 
upholding  the  law  and  jealously  preventing  any  attempts  to  vio- 
late it. 

With  economy  of  production  the  wages  of  labor  should  ad- 
vance, but  of  course  organized  selfishness  will  pay  as  low  wages 
as  possible,  and  until  compelled  to  do  so  in  some  way.  The  em- 
ployed can  profitably  combine  to  secure  just  pay,  but  attempting 
to  dictate  who  shall  be  employed  does  not  always  secure  the  best 
results  to  themselves  or  employers.  England  is  suffering  from 
labor  organizations  being  constructed  on  unwise  lines,  but  it  is 
natural  to  meet  hoggish  control  with  hoggish  opposition. 

The  cost  of  articles  is  the  first  to  rise  and  wages  are  the  last 
to  rise  because  the  employers  are  quite  willing  to  accept  the  bet- 
ter price  from  the  public,  but  they  are  not  willing  to  part  with 
any  of  this  good  fortune  to  those  who  help  them  to  it,  their  labor- 
ers. Some  notable  exceptions  occur,  but  it  is  not  the  rule  to 
promptly  raise  wages  as  increase  in  receipts  would  justify. 

The  coal  miners'  strike  in  Pennsylvania  in  September,  1900, 
was  due  to  the  owners  paying  small  rates  per  ton  and  counting 
3,000  pounds  to  the  ton  and  charging  high  prices  for  powder  to 
the  workmen,  $2.75  a  keg,  when  it  could  be  had  for  $1.10.  In- 
temperate workmen  also  want  the  stores  abolished,  so  they  can 
get  pay  instead  of  store  orders.  Intemperance  is  sometimes 
caused  by  the  hopeless  condition  in  which  workmen  may  be  held, 
as  the  sole  ambition  of  the  Russian  moujik  is  to  remain  constantly 
drunk. 

As  an  instance  of  the  tyranny  of  some  workingmen's  combina- 
tions, it  is  worth  mentioning  that  four  men  were  discharged  from 
a  cash  register  factory  in  Dayton,  Ohio,  which  was  arranged  on 
the  most  approved  sociological  lines  of  profit  sharing  and  comfort 
for  employes,  whereupon  all  the  workmen  struck.  The  workers' 
happiness  and  welfare  were  the  main  ideas  of  the  establishment, 
but  they  denied  their  benefactors  the  right  to  discharge  those  they 
had  once  employed.     But  this  is  met  with  general  denials. 

Thus  most  unexpected  failures  of  social  communities  con- 
stantly occur  through  selfish  old  human  nature  cropping  up  in 
unanticipated  ways. 


socioLOGr  575 

People  earning  meagre  livings  are  apt  to  be  indifferent  to  com- 
binations in  their  own  interests  until  forced  into  them  by  fear  of 
extermination.  The  Netherlanders  did  not  efficiently  combine 
against  Philip  II  of  Spain  till  he  planned  to  kill  every  Dutch 
man,  woman  and  child,  ''for  the  greater  glory  of  God."  The 
renegade,  the  traitor,  the  informer  is  invariably  present  to  thwart 
reforms.  Men  are  more  apt  to  combine  for  mutual  profit,  regard- 
less of  injury  to  others,  than  for  self-protection.  When  it  becomes 
profitable  to  rob  the  robbers,  then  spring  up  the  robbers  of  the 
robbers.  In  America  the  organizing  faculty  is  not  with  the  peo- 
ple, but  with  the  politicians.  As  a  survival  from  monarchy  days, 
the  people  expect  the  natural  rulers  to  take  charge  of  everything ; 
hence  we  have  a  special  ruling  class  from  the  slum,s,  and  a  sub- 
missive, groveling  ruled.  The  people  do  not  know  their  rights 
nor  how  to  assert  them;  the  politicians  study  how  to  run  the 
complex  mechinery  of  government  and  scheme  to  make  the  people 
puppets. 

The  guilds  beginning  with  the  Norman  conquest  united  trade 
interests,  finally  expanding  to  take  in  town  government  often. 
The  chamber  of  commerce  is  the  successor  of  the  guilds.  The 
Hansa  towns,  meaning  corporation,  during  the  fourteenth  and 
fifteenth  centuries,  comprised  60  to  80  cities  of  Germany,  strong 
enough  to  resist  powerful  monarchies,  but  kings  and  popes  tried 
to  destroy  them. 

About  1600  a  little  book  appeared  anonymously  in  Germany, 
entitled  ''The  Discovery  of  the  Honorable  Order  of  the  Rosy 
Cross,"  from  which  came  the  term  Rosicrucians.  It  contained 
dialogues  between  seven  sages  of  Greece  as  to  the  best  method  of 
general  reform  in  those  evil  times.  Seneca  suggests  a  secret 
confederacy  of  wise  philosophers  who  shall  labor  everywhere  in 
unison  for  this  desirable  end,  and  the  idea  is  adopted.  Their  sole 
aim  is  to  diminish  the  fearful  sum  of  human  suffering,  to  spread 
education  and  advance  learning,  science,  enlightenment  and  love. 

Quacks  reaped  a  harvest  by  perversions  of  this  work  of  An- 
drea, the  author.  Imposters  pretended  to  belong  to  the  frater- 
nity, and  found  a  readier  sale  for  their  nostrums.  Andrea  had 
great  trouble  in  trying  to  undo  what  scoundrels  had  built  upon 


c^6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

his  good  work.  The  word  Rosicrucian  came  to  mean  all  sorts  of 
occult  humbug. 

The  Utopia  of  Sir  Thomas  More  was  a  fiction  of  high  orig- 
inality which  caused  discussion  and  thoughtfulness  concerning 
social  organization.  The  Republic  of  Plato  no  doubt  furnished 
More  with  the  germ  of  his  perfect  society.  Swift  was  indebted  to 
More  for  many  of  his  ideas.  If  false  and  impracticable  theories 
are  found  in  Utopia,  says  Hallam,  this  is  in  a  much  greatfer  degree 
true  of  the  Platonic  Republic,  and  they  are  more  than  compensated 
by  the  sense  of  justice  and  humanity  that  pervades  it  and  his  bold 
censures  on  the  vices  of  power.  These  are  remarkable  in  a  cour- 
tier of  Henry  VIII,  but  in  the  first  year  of  Nero  the  voice  of 
Seneca  was  heard  without  resentment. 

Kirkup  holds  that  the  state  has  the  right  to  correct  inequality 
of  wealth  by  taking  from  those  who  have  and  giving  to  those  who 
have  not.  This  would  immediately  paralyze  all  commerce  and 
result  in  starvation  of  every  one,  the  lazy  and  dishonest  would 
receive  the  results  of  industry  and  thrift.  Lavelye  spoke  of 
greater  equality  in  social  states,  Von  Scheel  defined  socialism  as 
the  economic  philosophy  of  the  suffering  classes.  Collectivism 
denotes  managing  all  affairs  in  a  collective  way.^^  In  1720  to 
1800  trades  unions  began  in  England,  and  Rousseau,  Mably,  Mo- 
relly  and  Baboeuf  in  France  suggested  social  schemes.  The  lat- 
ter, in  1796,  projected  an  insurrection,  and  its  leaders  were  exe- 
cuted. In  1773  Ann  Lee,  the  Shaker  founder,  said  a  revelation 
from  heaven  instructed  her  to  go  to  America.  She  preached  and 
performed  cures  and  the  Shakers  claimed  equal  honors  with  Christ 
for  her  after  her  death  in  1874.  They  were  celibates  and  com- 
munists. 

Robt.  Owen,  1800- 1824,  experimented  as  a  philanthropist  at 
New  Lanark,  and  demonstrated  the  correctness  of  his  methods, 
while  he  was  at  their  head,  and  benefited  2,500  unpromising  peo- 
ple thoroughly.  The  English  church  and  state  condemned  him 
and  defeated  his  plans.  He  was  a  good  man  crushed  by  ignor- 
ance and  rapacity  in  high  places. 

A  community  at  New  Harmony,  Pennsylvania,  was  started  by 

^  T.  D.  Woolsey,  Communism  and  Socialism,  pp.  i  to  8. 


SOCIOLOGY.  577 

George  Rapp  in  1805,  moved  to  Posey  County,  Indiana,  and  sold 
out  to  Robert  Owen  in  1824  for  his  New  Lanark  community. 
There  are  but  few  members,  and  the  property  is  worth  two  mil- 
lion dollars  or  more.^*  They  sold,  rented  and  gave  away  the 
houses  and  lands  and  returned  to  individualism.^^  In  1816  began 
English  co-operative  movements.  Count  Henri  de  Saint-Simon 
was  the  founder  of  French  socialism  in  1817.  His  ideas  were 
vague  but  to  the  effect  that  industrial  chiefs  should  control  society 
and  science  direct  religion.  In  1832  began  Fourierism,  in  which 
association  is  the  central  idea  eating  and  cooking  in  common,  but 
private  property  was  not  abolished.  The  scheme  finally  failed 
by  1847.  Proudhon,  1839,  held  that  property  was  robbery  and 
founded  the  individualistic  and  communistic  anarchism  of  the 
present  day;  he  advocates  "mutualism"  in  his  last  work.  The 
anarchist  would  banish  all  rule  and  have  perfect  liberty,  such  as 
beasts  enjoy,  to  eat  one  another.  Anarchists  prefer  marriage,  not 
for  life,  but  during  convenience;  the  average  unrestrained  an- 
thropoid would  turn  his  wife  and  children  on  the  streets  when 
tired  of  them.  The  individualists  would  destroy  all  government 
with  fire  and  murder  and  laborers  are  to  t^ke  everything,  then 
organize  themselves. 26 

In  1840  Louis  Blanc  advanced  a  scheme  of  co-operation  with 
state  aid.  The  French  government  permitted  the  plan  in  1848,. 
and  all  but  56  of  the  associations  failed  by  1875.  The  one  remain- 
ing is  that  of  the  file  cutters.^''  Icaria,  in  1840,  was  a  romance  by 
Cabet,  leading  to  communism,  a  remnant  of  which  is  in  Adams 
County,  Iowa,  existing  in  a  modest,  slender  way.ss  In  1841 
Brook  Farm  was  started  at  West  Roxbury,  near  Boston,  re- 
modeled on  the  Fourier  plan,  and  in  1847  failed  and  sold 
out.  In  1843  the  Ebenezer  and  Amana  communities  were 
founded  on  ''inspiration,"  and  they  are  said  to  thrive.  Karl  Marx 
advanced  his  theory  of  capital  and  his  socialistic  influence  is  very 
great.  As  to  the  collectivist  creed  Marx  looks  upon  history  as 

^*C.  Nordhoff,  Communistic  Societies  of  the  U.  S.,  pp.  63,  91. 

^J.  H.  Noyes,  History  of  American  Socialism,  Ch.  IV. 

'^"H.  L.  Osgood,  Scientific  Anarchism,  Pol.  Sci.  Quar.,  Mch.,  1889. 

^^Laveleye,  The  Socialism  of  Today. 

"■*  A.  Shaw,  Icaria,  Iowa. 


578  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

ruled  by  material  interest  and  sees  in  the  development  of  economic 
production  a  conflict  of  classes.  He  thinks  capital  is  stolen  from 
the  laborers.  Profit  sharing  experiments  have  been  most  numer- 
ous in  France  and  America.  In  1848  the  Oneida  (New  York) 
Community  was  founded  by  J.  H,  Noyes,  who  advocated  a  com- 
munity of  goods,  wives  and  children.  He  had  crude  notions  of 
improving  the  stock  by  what  he  called  sterpiculture,  resulting  in 
feeble-mindedness  and  the  failure  of  the  community.  Co-opera- 
tive movements  in  Germany  extending  from  1848  numbered  in 
1884  one  and  a  half  million  members,  and  succeeded  in  many 
ways. 

In  1859  the  social  palace  of  Guise  was  begun  by  M.  Godin  on  a 
profit-sharing  plan.  The  stove  foundry  began  in  1840  with  twen- 
ty members,  now  has  fourteen  hundred  at  Guise,  and  three  hun- 
dred in  Belgium.     It  is  an  organization  for  mutual  help. 

Nihilism  began  in  Russia  in  the  year  i860,  through  a  few 
young  men  studying  Hegel.  They  wish  to  destroy  every  form 
of  government.  In  1862  the  Internationals  of  Europe  began  to 
plan  emancipation  by  the  workers  themselves.  They  failed  in  a 
few  years.  In  1866  the  Granger,  or  Farmers'  movement,  arose,  with 
three-fourths  of  a  million  members,  gradually  lessening  since 
1875.  Harris,  a  bigot,  started  a  religious  Brocton  community  in 
1867  on  Lake  Erie,  which  broke  up  in  1875.  In  1869  the  Knights 
of  Labor  started,  in  1872  the  Internationals  of  America,  which 
were  terminated  by  the  Chicago  riots  of  1886.  In  1880  Henry 
George  suggested  the  confiscation  of  rent,  and  originated  the  sin- 
gle tax  movement.  In  1883  the  state  socialist  measures  were 
started  by  the  German  government,  with  the  sickness  insurance 
law  of  1883,  accident  insurance  in  1884,  an  old  age  insurance  in 
1889.  New  trade  unionism  developed  in  1887,  and  in  the  next 
year  Bellamy's  book  and  the  materialist  movement  appeared,  end- 
ing in  smoke.  In  1894  the  American  Railway  Union  arose  and  the 
great  Pullman  strike  followed,  with  the  Coxey  tramp  march  upon 
Washington. 

Speculative  commimism  began  in  B.  C.  600.  Plato  favored  it, 
and  in  his  "Republic,"  Socrates  not  only  advised  goods  but  wives 
in  common.  Maybe  he  wanted  Xantippe  to  be  generally  appre- 
ciated.    Socialism,  communism  or  collectivism,  has  regard  to  the 


SOCIOLOGY. 


579 


common  weal.  As  used  by  the  French  and  Germans,  collectivism 
means  industries  managed  in  the  collective  way  instead  of  sepa- 
rately and  by  individuals. 

In  most  cases  these  communistic  schemes  have  been  enthusi- 
astically advanced  by  men  with  one  idea,  ignorant  but  honest,  and 
really  feeling  that  they  were  inspired,  or  had  fathomed  the  se- 
crets of  the  universe.  It  is  notable  that  religion  binds  people  to- 
gether more  closely  through  substituting  hopes  of  reward  in  an- 
other life,  making  them  submit  to  inconveniences  here  more  read- 
ily, and  finally  habit  may  make  them  adjusted  to  the  communistic 
life,  however  silly  or  peculiar  it  may  be.  Of  course  there  are 
numerous  advantages  mixed  with  the  most  foolish  of  these 
schemes.  The  Rugby  colony  in  Tennessee  was  too  good  to  last. 
Several  Mexican  projects  have  waxed  and  waned,  often  ending 
in  one  man  owning  all  the  property  and  making  the  rest  work  for 
him.  The  Overcomers  of  Jerusalem  started  in  Chicago,  termi- 
nated in  a  female  bossing  a  lot  of  swindled  converts  whom  she 
now  works  as  slaves.  A  treasurer  of  the  scheme  remained  in 
Chicago  with  wealth  enough  to  console  him  for  absence  from  the 
holy  land.  Dowie  has  a  Zion  in  Illinois,  and  a  notable  kingdom 
of  about  the  same  sort  existed  on  an  island  in  Lake  Michigan  in 
early  days ;  the  people  becoming  bandits,  were  driven  out  by  ad- 
joining citizens.  The  quakers  and  shakers  are  the  most  thrifty 
and  harmless  of  such  gatherings,  but  they  are  gradually  passing 
away  as  sects.  Such  organizers  as  succeed  in  accomplishing 
great  changes  apparently  for  the  better,  seldom  if  ever  leave  prog- 
eny equal  to  them,  as  in  the  case  of  Charlemagne,  Cromwell  and 
others.  The  industrial  communities  such  as  Sir  Titus  Salt 
founded  do  great  good  and  are  filled  with  happy,  contented  people. 
Probably  some  of  the  various  profit-sharing  enterprizes  are  the 
most  practical  and  productive.  Marshall  Field  of  Chicago  is  said 
to  be  one  of  the  most  just  business  men  in  the  world.  He  gives 
fair  salaries  and  has  numerous  partners  in  his  various  departments 
who  have  been  promoted  for  efficiency.  Those  who  have  an  in- 
terest in  working  with  you  are  more  to  be  deoended  upon  to  ad- 
vance the  general  business  than  dissatisfied  employes.  The  vari- 
ous communistic  schemes  have  in  some  cases  done  away  with 
family  life,  others  have  antagonized  governments  and  been  pre- 


580  THE    EVOLUTION    OE    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

mature,  or  the  head  of  the  affair  ran  afoul  of  ancient  vested  inter- 
ests and  was  suppressed,  as  was  Robert  Owen;  many  schemes 
have  thrived  through  the  energy  and  strong  individuaUty  of  those 
at  the  head,  to  die  with  them  because  their  guidance  was  lacking. 
Most  of  the  plans  have  contained  childish  business  or  scientific 
ideas,  and  somCj  like  that  of  Louis  Blanc,  might  succeed  in  part 
and  be  adapted  to  one  particular  sort  of  business  and  not  to  others. 
A  fe\v,  as  in  Germany,  succeed,  though  their  founders  may  per- 
ish in  want,  as  did  Schulze,  who  impoverished  himself  to  carry 
out  his  co-operative  movement.  He  believed  in  self-help  rather 
than  state  help.  His  society^  of  a  million  and  a  half  members  has 
a  resjerve  fund  of  three  hundred  million  marks.  The  vast  major- 
ity of  these  movements,  particularly  in  America,  gradually  dwin- 
dle, as  the  occasion  for  their  starting  passes.  Enthusiasm  dies 
out,  or  some  fool  or  rogue  gets  at  the  management.  No  infallible 
system  has  been  yet  described.  Like  everything  else  in  the  uni- 
verse, natural  selection  and  survival  of  the  fittest  will  determino 
whether  a  scheme  of  the  sort  will  succeed  or  not,  and  as  much 
depends  upon  unforeseen  conditions,  chance  obstacles  or  favoring 
influences,  prospects  seem  discouraging,  though  patient  study  of 
the  history  of  previous  schemes  and  the  reasons  for  their  success 
or  failure,  together  with  due  regard  for  old  animal-human  nature, 
offer  more  encouragement  to  philanthropists.  Bellamy's  ideal 
people  were  not  of  this  world ;  they  were  too  good  to  be  true. 
What  would  happen  to  them  if  one  of  our  peanut  politicians  lived 
among  them  ? 

Animals  generally  educate  their  young,  apes  and  birds  espe- 
cially. Among  those  who  educate  themselves  are  cats,  who  learn 
by  experience  to  pay  no  attention  to  their  reflection  in  a  looking- 
glass.  Huxley  observes  that  education  begins  with  birth  and 
that  we  would  know  little  indeed  if  all.  we  knew  was  what  we  got 
from  the  schools.  One  has  to  learn  how  to  cross  a  street  with- 
out being  run  over.  As  for  schools,  it  is  not  the  love  of  learning 
that  fills  them ;  it  is  the  advantage  to  be  derived  from  mastering 
some  subject,  or,  rather,  to  secure  the  diploma  or  certificate, 
whether  mastered  or  not,  or  because  compelled  to  become  schooled 
against  desire.  Carlyle  says,  "the  true  university  of  these  days  is 
a  collection  of  books."   Physical  force  was  requisite  to  the  teacher 


SOCIOLOGY.  581 

of  the  early  part  of  the  last  century,  and  survives  in  some  places 
today. 

Education  helps  us  to  unlearn,  to  tear  down  old  reflexes,  and 
to  dissociate  what  has  been  integrated  in  the  brain.  It  often  is 
as  difficult  as  ripping  up  anatomical  structures,  and  this  is  exactly 
what  education  does,  or  often  tries  to  do,  but  fails  because  age  or 
ignorance  makes  such  structures  too  secure. 

Education  also  builds  up  reflexes  in  a  brain,  leading  to  expert- 
ness  and  facility  of  working,  or,  as  Ruskin  observed,  *'The  mo- 
ment a  man  can  really  do  his  work  he  becomes  speechless  about 
it."  The  French  divide  students  into  auditaires  and  visuaires,  or 
those  who  learn  by  hearing  or  visual  impressions,  and  it  is  a  fair 
division.  Lawyers  may  be  observed  who  can  prepare  a  case  from 
study  of  books,  mainly ;  others  prefer  to  hear  evidence  and  think 
the  case  over  in  auditory  terms.  In  court,  in  the  trial  of  a  case, 
a  suggestion  to  a  visuaire  is  best  made  in  writing,  an  auditaire  pre- 
fers to  hear  the  expert's  suggestions.  What  is  learned  in  youth 
may  become  more  vivid  with  age,  so  the  usefulness  of  life  may  be 
increased  by  teaching  children  scientific  matters  such  as  chemistry, 
physics  and  biology,  for  they  will  impart  a  logic  obtainable  in  no 
other  way.  Old  methods  have  served  their  time,  a  technical  skilled 
training  which  enables  a  living  to  be  secured  should  be  first  and 
foremost;  the  ornamental,  according  to  Spencer,  may  be  added 
later.  Huxley's  suggestions  for  education^^  favor  lectures,  dem- 
onstrations and  examinations,  and  he  makes  the  valuable  observa- 
tion that  "the  better  a  lecture  is  as  an  oration  the  poorer  it  is  as 
instruction." 

Education  of  the  young  occurred  in  ancient  Egypt  according 
to  rank ;  priests  taught  their  children  writing,  astronomy  and 
mathematics.  Moses  was  thus  educated.  The  ancient  Chaldeans 
were  literary.  China  had  universities  in  remote  ages.  Persia, 
Judea  and  Greece  taught  their  children.  Scholasticism  was  rife 
in  the  later  Roman  empire  and  consisted  in  chatter  about  chatter. 
That  theology  is  the  only  philosophy  is  a  survival  from  such  days. 
Charlemagne  and  King  Alfred  were  eager  to  extend  learning. 
The  latter  is  said  to  have  founded  Oxford,  but  there  is  no  proof 

^Lay  Sermons,  p.  no. 


582  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

of  the  existence  of  that  college  till  a  hundred  years  later.  The 
University  of  Paris  was  founded  in  the  twelfth  century.  The 
cathedral  and  conventual  schools  created  or  restored  by  Charle- 
magne, became  the  means  of  preserving  that  small  portion  of 
learning  which  continued  to  exist.  They  flourished  most,  having 
had  time  to  produce  their  fruits,  imder  his  successors,  Louis  the 
Debonair,  Lothaire  and  Charles  the  Bald.  Rabelais  managed, 
under  the  guise  of  humorous  indecency,  to  spread  some  ideas 
among  the  priest-ridden  populace,  of  the  extent  of  their  swine-like 
submission  to  tyranny,  A.  D.  1552.  The  treatise  on  Causes,  of 
Giordano  Bruno,  a  sort  of  pantheism,  led  to  his  being  burned  at 
the  stake  in  1600.  The  essays  of  Montaigne  in  1580  make  an 
epoch  in  literature  through  their  influence  upon  opinions  in 
Europe.  He  popularized  many  forms  of  thought  previously  con- 
fined to  a  few. 

As  early  as  the  sixth  century,  when  France  and  Italy  had 
sunk  into  deeper  ignorance,  the  Irish  monasteries  stood  in  a  very 
respectable  position  with  regard  to  learning.^^  The  influence  of 
the  church  upon  learning  was  partly  favorable  and  partly  the 
reverse.  The  venerable  Bede  compiled  the  literature  extant  in  his 
time  early  in  the  eighth  century.  A  desire  for  knowledge  increased. 
The  tenth  century  was  darker  in  Italy  and  England  than  in  France 
and  Germany,  though  ignorance  abounded  in  Europe  generally. 

The  progress  of  learning,  however,  was  not  to  be  a  march 
through  a  submissive  country.  Ignorance,  which  had  much  to 
lose  and  was  proud  as  well  as  rich,  ignorance  in  high  places,  which 
is  always  incurable,  because  it  never  seeks  for  a  cure,  set  itself 
sullenly  and  stubbornly  against  the  new  teachers.  In  place  of 
the  silly  books  in  favor,  philology  and  real  science  were  threat- 
ened. ''Through  all  the  palaces  of  Ignorance  went  forth  a  cry 
of  terror  at  the  coming  light."  One  man  above  all  the  rest,  Eras- 
mus, cut  them  to  pieces  with  irony  and  invective.  They  stood  in 
the  way  of  his  noble  zeal  for  the  restoration  of  letters.  Erasmus 
was  soon  in  a  state  of  war  with  the  monks  and  in  15 18  inveighed 
against  them  in  notes  to  his  New  Testament.^^ 

^"Eichhorn,  Vol.  II,  p.  176. 

"  Hallam,  Literature  in  Europe,  Vol.  IV. 


SOCIOLOGY.  583 

The  Jesuits  established  their  first  school  in  1540  in  Valencia 
under  Francis  Borgia,  and  this  was  the  commencement  of  that 
vast  influence  they  were  speedily  to  acquire  by  the  control  of  edu- 
cation. They  began  about  the  same  time  to  scatter  their  mission- 
aries over  the  East.  Men  saw  in  the  Jesuits  courage  and  self-de- 
votion, learning  and  politeness,  qualities  the  want  of  which  had 
been  the  disgrace  of  monastic  fraternities.  The  dangers  of  their 
system  were  yet  still  too  remote  to  excite  popular  alarm. 

Fenelon  was  the  pioneer  in  1688^^  concerning  the  matter  of 
female  education,  and  this  was  the  cause  of  his  becoming  pre- 
ceptor to  the  grandchildren  of  Louis  XIV.  He  noted  that  a  child 
learns  much  before  he  speaks,  so  that  the  cultivation  of  his  moral 
qualities  cannot  begin  too  soon.  He  complains  of  the  severity  of 
parents  and  deprecates  the  use  of  punishment  for  children.  He 
advises  the  use  of  the  pleasanter  aspects  of  religious  instruction. 
He  is  indulgent,  his  method  is  a  labor  of  love,  a  desire  to  render 
children  happy  for  the  time,  as  well  as  afterward,  and  ''he  may 
perhaps  be  considered  the  founder  of  that  school  which  has  en- 
deavored to  dissipate  the  terrors  and  dry  the  tears  of  childhood.^^ 

''I  have  seen,"  says  Fenelon,  "many  children  who  have  learned 
to  read  in  play ;  we  have  only  to  read  entertaining  stories  to  them 
out  of  a  book,  and  insensibly  teach  them  the  letters;  they  will 
soon  desire  to  go  for  themselves  to  the  source  of  their  amuse- 
ment." 

He  thinks  that  the  natural,  just  ways  of  thinking  of  children 
should  be  encouraged  instead  of  warped  as  they  are  by  contact 
with  the  blunders,  ignorance  and  malevolence  of  the  world.  He, 
however,  does  not  favorably  regard  teaching  science  to  females. 

Rousseau,  in  1762,  attempted  reformation  of  education  in  his 
pedagogic  romance  "Emile,"  which  created  a  great  scandal,  and 
the  Bishop  of  Paris  aimed  an  encyclical  letter  of  twenty-seven 
chapters  at  the  book,  and  Rousseau  had  barely  time  to  fly  for  his 
life.  His  book  was  burned  by  the  executioner.  Basedow,  Pesta- 
lozzi  and  Froebel  were  inspired  in  their  labors  by  "Emile.'^ 
Rousseau's  idea  was  to  unfold  the  powers  of  children  in  due  pro- 

'■*  Sur  UEducation  des  Filles. 
^■'  Hallam,  op.  cit. 


584  '^^^^    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

portion  to  their  age,  to  teach  observation,  self-reHance  and  to  rea- 
son, and  to  rely  less  upon  ^'authority."  The  church  saw  danger 
in  awakening  reason.  Pestalozzi,  in  1798  to  1827,  in  Switzerland, 
said :  "Nature  develops  all  the  human  faculties  by  practice,  and 
their  growth  ^depends  on  their  exercise."  "The  circle  of  knowl- 
edge commences  close  around  a  man  and  thence  extends  concen- 
trically." "Force  not  the  faculties  of  children  into  the  remote 
paths  of  knowledge  until  they  have  gained  strength  by  exercise  on 
things  that' are  near  them."  "There  is  in  nature  an  order  and 
march  of  development.  If  you  disturb  or  interfere  wit?  ii  you 
mar  the  peace  and  harmony  of  the  mind.  And  this  you  do  if 
before  you  have  formed  the  mind  by  the  progressive  knowledge  of 
the  realities  of  life  you  fling  it  into  the  hbyrinth  of  words  and 
make  them  the  basis  of  development."  "Schools  place  words  first 
and  thus  secure  a  deceitful  appearance  of  success  at  the  expense 
of  natural  and  safe  development."  He  sought  the  interest  of  his 
pupils  in  their  lessons,-  and  wrote  the  book  "How  Gertrude 
Teaches  her  Children."  "Training  is  everything.  The  peach  was 
once  a  bitter  almond;  cauliflower  is  nothing  but  a  cabbage  with 
a  college  education."  ^* 

There  is  no  absurdity  so  palpable  but  that  it  may  be  firmly 
planted  in  the  human  head  if  you  can  only  begin  to  innoculate  it 
with  an  air  of  great  solemnity.  For,  as  in  the  case  of  animals, 
so  in  that  of  man,  training  is  successful  only  when  you  begin  in 
early  youth. 

"Noblemen  and  gentlemen  are  trained  to  hold  nothing  sacred 
but  their  word  of  honor,  to  maintain  a  zealous,  rigid  and  un- 
shaken belief  in  the  ridiculous  code  of  chivalry,  and  if  they  are 
called  upon  to  do  so  to  seal  their  belief  by  dying  for  it,  and  seri- 
ously to  regard  a  king  as  a  being  of  a  higher  order. 

"Again  our  expressions  of  politeness,  the  compliments  we 
make,  in  particular,  the  respectful  attention  we  pay  to  ladies  are 
a  matter  of  training,  as  also  our  esteem  for  good  birth,  rank,  titles 
and  so  on.  Of  the  same  character  is  the  resentment  we  feel  at  any 
insult  directed  against  us,  and  the  measure  of  this  resentment  may 
be  exactly  determined  by  the  nature  of  the  insult.     An  English- 

^  Mark  Twain. 


SOCIOLOGY.  585 

man,  for  instance,  thinks  it  a  deadly  insult  to  be  told  that  he  is  no 
gentleman,  or  still  worse  that  he  is  a  liar,  a  Frenchman  has  the 
same  feeling  if  you  call  him  a  coward,  and  a  German  if  you  say 
he  is  stupid.^^ 

Generalizations  arise  from  abstractions  of  particular  observa- 
tions. So  if  we  learn  otherwise  than  through  experience  we  get 
distorted  notions.  Schopenhauer  speaks  of  experience  as  the  nat- 
ural and  teaching  as  the  artificial  means  of  learning.  General 
ideas  driven  into  memory  before  the  special  are  learned  cause  you 
to.  Si^e  ^he  world  falsely.  As  when  one  travels  late  in  life  he  finds 
all  his  preconceptions  full  of  mistakes  and  it  may  be  too  late  to 
correct  them.  This  is  why  ''common  sense"  is  lacking  in  men  of 
''education."  Facts  s^iould  be  first  acquired  as  nearly  first  hand 
as  possible  and  generalizations  formed  from  them  later.  Chil- 
dren should  be  compelled  to  understand  every  word  they  learn 
before  being  allowed  to  use  it.  Otherwise  knowledge  may  be 
mere  verbiage.  Preconceptions  are  often  so  deep  that  a  man  will 
shut  his  eyes  to  facts  and  refuse  to  see  what  contradicts  his  false 
views  obtained  from  others.  At  least  the  child  should  be  taught 
to  verify  the  facts  taught.  It  would  learn  to  measure  things  by  its 
own  standard  rather  than  by  another's  and  thus  escape  a  thousand 
strange  fancies  and  prejudices  and  not  have  to  unlearn  so  much. 
So  it  often  happens  that  the  neglected  waif  has  an  advantage  in 
not  being  falsely  instructed  but  in  having  been  enabled  to  see 
things  for  himself,  and  the  incredulity  and  scorn  of  false  notions 
he  acquires  comes  from  that. 

Previous  to  Lamartine  the  style  phraseology  and  language  in 
France  was  moulded  after  certain  models.  Poetry  and  literary 
language  was  copied  after  the  classics  of  Greece  and  Rome.  Art 
was  subservient  to  old  methods  and  measurements  notwithstand- 
ing the  glaring  falsifications  of  nature  comparable  to  the  conven- 
tional tracings  of  Egypt.  Sculpture  and  painting  was  bound  to 
certain  silly  methods  such  as  giving  human  eyes  to  horses  and 
making  bodily  parts  equal  to  so  many  heads.  Malebranche"''  was 
an   admirer   of    Descartes,   though   acknowledging    no   master. 

^^  Schopenhauer,  Studies  in  Pessimism. 
■■"'  Recherche  de  la  Verite,  1674. 


586  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

Error  he  held  to  be  the  source  of  all  human  misery,  he  had  some 
ideas  as  to  the  relations  of  the  fibres  of  the  brain  to  thought,  a 
connection  between  brain  motions  and  the  operations  of  the  mind, 
crude  as  these  ideas  were  they  were  in  advance  of  the  notions  of 
his  day.    Pascal  laid  down  geometrical  rules  for  reasoning. 

*'The  intellectual  standing  of  any  civilized  nation  depends  upon 
two  things,  the  preservation  in  books,  in  memory  and  in  works 
of  art  and  industry  of  the  ideas  of  ancient  workers  and  thinkers 
and  the  mental  activity  of  living  thinkers  and  inventors  whose 
work  takes  its  start  from  this  standpoint  of  stored  up  thought, 
Rob  any  community  of  all  its  basic  ideas  and  it  would  quickly 
retrograde  to  a  primitive  condition  of  thought  and  organization 
from  which  it  might  need  centuries  to  emerge."  ^^ 

The  dangerous  consequences  to  religion  and  morality  are 
urged  in  refutation  of  certain  ideas.  No  matter  if  the  ideas  are 
true  the  lie  must  stand.  The  universe  would  fall  to  pieces  if 
bound  together  with  such  bonds.  Immoral  means,  Jesuitical 
means  must  be  taken  to  establish  puerile  conceptions  of  so-called 
"right  and  wrong." 

Universities  should  give  free  instruction  in  all  branches. 
There  should  be  no  charge  for  tuition.  Chairs  should  be  endowed 
and  professors  selected  for  their  abilities.  At  present  the  build- 
ing is  everything  and  any  sort  of  a  figure-head  will  answer  for  a 
teacher  if  he  has  the  influence  to  secure  the  place.  Moreover,  the 
great  donations  to  universities  enable  the  wealthy  to  have  a  wide 
curriculum,  while  the  cause  of  general  education  is  only  sec- 
ondarily and  remotely  and  insufficiently  helped  by  university  ex- 
tension methods  which  seldom  reach  the  parties  most  to  be  bene- 
fited. 

Vested  interests  crop  up  in  shaping  the  teaching  in  schools. 
Occasionally  an  honest,  well-informed  professor  will  be  admon- 
ished by  his  designing  colleagues  that  his  lectures  hurt  some  spe- 
cial interest,  and  he  should  not  continue  on  that  line.  Darwin,  in 
his  autobiography,  says  that  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh  he 
found  the  instruction  in  several  branches  incredibly  dull,  and  con- 
siders his  time  at  Cambridge  as  completely  wasted,  owing  to  the 

"  Morris,  Man  and  His  Ancestors,  p.  87. 


SOCIOLOGY.  587 

conservative,  legendary  teaching  that  avoids  harming:  the  vested 
interests  of  ecclesiasts. 

Educating  moral  imbeciles  gives  them  added  power  for  evil. 
Increase  of  intelligence  merely  affords  the  honest  and  dishonest 
better  means  of  asserting  themselves.  It  does  not,  as  history 
shows,  create  either  more  honesty  or  dishonesty,  but  in  the  clash 
between  the  two  the  finding  of  the  line  of  least  resistance  may 
end  in  degeneracy  or  adjusting  to  the  assumption  that  "honesty 
is  the  best  policy,"  possibly  ending  in  the  habit  of  honesty  being 
formed. 

Darwin  thought  that  a  powerful  animal  would  not  have  been 
so  liable  to  be  social  and  to  that  very  fact  of  our  ancestry  lacking 
in  strength  may  be  due  the  higher  mentality  of  man,  as  he  had 
to  substitute  craft  for  power. 

The  social  feeling  is  an  extension  of  the  parental  or  filial. 
Those  individuals  which  took  the  greatest  interest  in  society  would 
best  escape  dangers  while  those  who  care  least  for  their  comrades 
and  live  solitary  would  perish  in  great  numbers.  So  that  mainly 
those  who  clung  together  would  survive  to  create  posterity  like 
themselves,  and  only  the  few  forms  who  were  strong  enough,  like 
the  lion,  to  live  apart  would  similarly  be  permitted  to  live. 

Social  interchange  of  ideas  develops  intellect  and  the  solitary 
must  suffer  deterioration  in  the  forming  of  a  community. 

Transformations  such  as  that  of  rapacious,  selfish  man  into  the 
altruistic,  considerate  and  social  man  are  paralleled  by  the  feud  be- 
tween cats  and  dogs  transmitted  from  vast  ages  back  common  to 
the  great  families  of  felidae  and  canidse,  with  rare  examples  here 
and  there  of  individual  cats  and  dogs  tolerating  each  other  or  even 
becoming  friends. 

The  cave  men  of  Europe  have  left  evidences  of  their  having 
been  a  filthy  lot,  too  ignorant,  indifferent  and  lazy  to  remove  ac- 
cumulations from  places  where  they  lived.  Much  of  this  unclean 
animal  nature  survives  in  the  Hindoos  and  even  in  the  Spaniards. 
Under  Spain  everything  offensive  existed  in  Cuba,  filth,  fevers, 
murder,  robbery,  gambling,  ecclesiasticism.  When  Havana  was 
cleaned  up  by  the  Americans,  under  George  Waring,  Jr.,  whose 
valuable  life  was  sacrificed  in  his  work,  yellow  fever,  malaria, 
smallpox,  etc.,  disappeared.     Murders  ceased,  robbery  stopped. 


588  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

and  the  Cubans  did  not  recognize  themselves,  but  the  Cuban  news- 
papers of  1902  complain  of  a  sincere  attempt  of  the  Spaniards  to 
revert  to  their  former  filthiness  in  many  instances. 

It  often  appears  that  many  vile  things  are  associated,  such  as 
strife,  disease,  etc.,  and  that  improvement  in  one  direction  often 
helps  other  matters  to  become  better.  Physical  and  moral  cleanli- 
ness cohere  often,  and  neighbors  finding  a  better  atmosphere  are 
likely  to  imitate  what  is  good.  Filth  breeds  disease,  neglected 
muck  heaps  bring  flies,  and  they  carry  typhoid.  Swamps  afford 
mosquitoes  and  they  spread  malaria.  So  an  ignorant,  lazy  com- 
munity is  likely  to  be  a  sickly  one.  The  cleaning  up  of  Santiago 
and  Havana  dropped  the  death  rate  and  almost  abolished  yellow 
fever.  The  Spaniards  appear  to  have  brought  all  sorts  of  diseases 
to  America,  such  as  smallpox,  syphilis,  yellow  fever  and  even 
malaria,  for  the  natives  claim  that  such  things  were  unknown 
previous  to  Cortez'  invasion. 

In  keeping  with  disease  and  cruelty  among  the  Spaniards  their 
ideas  of  "honor"  are  low.  Two  hundred  Red  Cross  flags  were  hung 
out  over  ordinary  houses  in  Santiago  during  the  battle  to  keep  the 
Americans  from  shooting  into  Spanish  troops,  while  Spanish 
guerrillas  fired  on  the  American  wounded  even  when  the  Red 
Cross  flag  was  on  the  tent  or  ambulance.  They  stole  the  food  from 
their  citizens  and  sent  them  out  of  the  city  to  be  fed  by  the  Ameri- 
can troops.  Gen.  Blanco,  the  governor-general  of  Cuba,  appro- 
priated one  hundred  tons  of  Red  Cross  supplies  sent  bv  America 
to  the  reconcentrados  and  used  the  goods  for  his  soldiers. 

Spain  cared  nothing  for  its  soldiers'  lives.  The  officers  robbed 
the  privates  of  subsistence  and  then  urged  them  to  fight  to  the 
death.    Officers  never  surrendered  when  they  had  food. 

The  Spanish  naval  officers  were  too  gentlemanly  to  submit  to 
drill  or  instruction  and  depended  on  what  they  called  "common 
sense"  and  "practical  ideas."  The  ordinary  sailors  of  the  United 
States  were  schooled  and  trained  in  complicated  theories  combined 
with  target  and  other  practice  and  the  world  saw  the  result. 

The  vast  and  sudden  extension  of  the  means  of  communicat- 
ing and  influencing  opinion  which  the  discovery  of  printing  af- 
forded did  not  long  remain  unnoticed.  Few  have  temper  and  com- 
prehensive views  enough  not  to  desire  the  prevention  by  force  of 


SOCIOLOGY.  589^ 

that  which  they  reckon  detrimental  to  truth  and  right.  "Hermo- 
laus  Barbarus,  in  a  letter  to  Merula,  recommends  that  on  account 
of  the  many  trifling  publications  which  took  men  off  from  read- 
ing the  best  authors  nothing  should  be  printed  without  the  appro- 
bation of  competent  judges. "^^  The  same  old  spirit  of  censorship 
we  find  at  every  hand  and  in  all  ages  even  down  to  the  present. 

Books  were  burned  by  order  of  the  university .^^  An  incredible 
host  of  popular  religious*  tracts  poured  forth  in  Europe  with  the 
opposition  of  churches  and  governments  seeking  to  stem  this  free- 
dom of  a  new  means  of  thinking  and  speaking.  Many  were  the 
attempts  to  tax,  license  and  curtail  book  making.  A  bull  of  Alex- 
ander VI  in  1 501  reciting  that  many  pernicious  books  had  been 
printed  in  various  parts  of  the  world  and  especially  in  Cologne, 
Mentz,  Treves  and  Magdeburg,  forbids  all  printers  to  publish  any 
books  without  the  license  of  the  archbishops  or  their  officials.**^ 

England  seems  to  have  been  nearly  stationary  in  academical 
learning  during  the  unpropitious  reign  of  Henry  VII.  Italy  was 
a  century  ahead  of  England  in  learning.  In  1598  King  Henry  IV 
of  France  ate  without  forks  in  his  palace.  Spoons  had  been  in- 
vented and  knives  were  known,  though  for  a  couple  of  centuries 
the  little  pitchfork,  fourchette,  was  used  on  special  occasions  and 
not  as  now  used. 

The  hands  were  more  carefully  washed  in  those  days  before 
and  after  meals.  The  change  from  fingers  to  forks  began  to  be 
made  about  the  end  of  the  sixteenth  and  beginning  of  the  seven- 
teenth centuries  and  much  ridicule  was  heaped  upon  the  innova- 
tion as  over-luxurious.  After  the  seventeenth  century  the  use  of 
forks  spread  from  the  aristocracy  to  humble  circles  of  society.  Its 
form  underwent  change  from  two  straight  prongs  to  the  conven- 
iently curved  many-pronged  fork  of  today .*^ 

The  steps  from  individual  to  national  hunger  appeasing  are  in 
the  chase,  the  pastoral  and  farming  life,  seeking  new  fields  be- 
cause of  overcrowding  and  the  emigrations  causing  predatory 
habits,  battles  being  between  families  of  the  same  tribe,  then  with 

''  Beckman,  Ch.  Ill,  p.  98. 

•'"' Chevillier,  p.  302. 

""Guden's  Codex  diplomaticus.  Vol.  IV. 

*'J.  von  Falke,  Ueber  Land  und  Meer,  1889.     , 


590  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    IIIS    MIND. 

neighboring  tribes,  and  these  united  to  fight  other  tribes.  The 
government  developing  from  the  family  to  the  tribe  and  nation. 
Trade  develops,  capital  enabling  the  spread  of  commerce  and  in- 
tercommunication uses  at  first  rude  boats  and  wagons,  finally  sail- 
ing and  steam  vessels  and  railways,  telegraphs  and  ocean  cables. 

A  street  without  sidewalks  in  a  large  city  would  seem  queer 
to-day.  We  are  so  accustomed  to  them  that  one  who  builds  a 
house  would  not  think  of  leaving  its  front  without  a  sidewalk. 
We  accept  sidewalks  as  the  usual  thing  without  expecting  to 
charge  passengers  for  walking  over  them.  But  long  ago  a  builder 
Vv^ould  have  laughed  to  scorn  the  idea  that  he  was  in  any  way 
obliged  to  put  down  smooth  surfaces  for  the  rabble  to  walk  over. 
At  this  extreme  we  have  the  sidewalk  constructed  as  a  habit,  at 
the  other  extreme  the  bare  idea  of  one  was  nonsense. 

Society  sweeps  its  debris  into  tenements,  alleys,  jails,  asylums, 
poorhouses  and  refuses  to  look  at  it,  but  surveying  its  cleaned 
streets  and  well-kept  parks  exclaims,  "How  beautiful  the  world 
is  and  how  it  advances." 

The  rich  certainly  need  educating,  for  their  distance  from  the 
poor  puts  them  beyond  sympathy  for  them,  but  if  they  can  be  in- 
duced to  take  interest  in  the  remunerative  modern  methods  of 
Mills  in  New  York  and  Rowton  of  London  in  building  model 
boarding  houses  for  the  poor  they  can  pride  themselves  on  their 
charity  and  make  money  at  the  same  time,  such  a  feeling  as  is 
pandered  to  by  the  giving  of  a  charity  ball.  At  first  this  improved 
tenement  house  plan  was  a  charity,  later  it  was  ascertained  to  be 
a  good  investment  and  it  was  seen  that  decency  and  philanthropy 
would  pay,  when  rightly  managed. 

We  prefer  to  imagine  that  our  own  particular  way  of  living  is 
the  proper  and  only  one.  Among  some  Nubian  Arabs  three  days 
out  of  four  the  woman  must  be  chaste,  the  fourth  she  may  do  as 
she  pleases.  During  some  religious  festivals  the  bonds  of  mar- 
riage are  released  by  common  consent.  The  Dogut  Indian  is 
jealous  and  will  beat  his  wife  for  an  impropriety,  but  will  lend 
her  to  a  friend.  Among  the  Eskimos  a  married  person  is  husband 
or  wife  to  all  other  married,  but  the  single  must  remain  such  till 
married.     Monogamy  was  the  law  among  the  ancient  Romans 


SOCIOLOGY.  591 

and  descended  to  us  by  this  pagan  custom  being  fused  with  Chris- 
tian observances. 

Pericles  stood  above  the  multitude.  His  successors  were 
obliged  to  adopt  other  methods  to  acquire  influence ;  they  took  ad- 
vantage not  so  much  of  the  strong  as  the  weak  points  in  the  char- 
acter of  the  citizen  and  obtained  popularity  by  flattering  their  in- 
clinations and  endeavoring  to  satisfy  the  cravings  of  their  baser 
nature.  The  bravest  men  felt  that  the  prospect  of  being  called  to 
account  as  to  their  campaigns  by  cowardly  demagogues  before  a 
capricious  multitude  disturbed  the  straightforward  joyousness  of 
their  activity  and  opposed  obstacles  to  their  successes.  A  dema- 
gogue then  was  simply  an  influential  speaker  of  popular  politics. 
Demosthenes  was  commonly  distinguished  as  an  orator,  but  Kleon 
is  branded  as  a  demagogue. 

In  Russia  it  is  dangerous  to  be  charitable  on  a  large  scale; 
the  court  fears  education  and  Hfting  of  the  common  people.  The 
czar  is  really  a  mere  figurehead,  the  nobles  behind  him  are  the  re- 
fined brutes.  It  is  interesting  to  trace  the  origin  of  their  sleek, 
arrogant  cruelty,  such  as  the  pretty  buzzard  or  vulture  displays. 

A  story  entitled  "The  Sowers"  describes  the  treatment  in  store 
for  any  nobleman  who  dares  to  endeavor  uplifting  the  laboring 
classes. 

When  the  Pennsylvania  coal  strike  began  the  powerful,  re- 
spectable mine  owners  cut  off  food  from  the  miners'  families ;  at 
the  same  time  the  striking  miners  refused  to  flood  the  mines  as 
they  might  easily  have  done  by  calling  out  the  pump  men. 

During  the  coal  famine  of  1903,  caused  by  conspiracies  be- 
tween railways,  dealers  and  mine  operators  to  keep  coal  scarce 
to  enable  high  prices,  the  City  of  Chicago  adopted  a  temporary 
plan  of  selling  coal  at  cost  to  the  poor.  This  precedent  might  jus- 
tify municipal  control  of  all  business  whatsoever,  but  the  dishon- 
esty of  the  people  and  officials  would  bar  such  possibilities.  Or- 
ganizations to  take  foul  advantage  of  such  a  system  would  at  once 
arise.  If  systems  can  be  arranged  to  prevent  such  dishonesty  then 
the  plan  would  succeed. 

Indicating  how  a  nobility  or  privileged  class  may  be  created 
from  the  ranks,  Gerald  Griffin  remarks  that  when  the  countrv  was 


592  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

deserted  by  its  gentry,  a  general  promotion  of  one  grade  took 
place  among  those  who  remained  at  home.  The  farmers  became 
gentlemen  and  the  laborers  farmers,  the  former  assuming,  to- 
gether with  the  station  and  influence,  the  quick  and  honorable 
spirit,  the  love  of  pleasure  and  the  feudal  authority,  which  distin- 
guished their  aristocratic  achetypes,  while  the  humbler  classes 
looked  up  to  them  for  advice  and  assistance  with  the  same  feeling 
of  respect  and  dependence  which  they  once  entertained  for  the 
actual  proprietors  of  the  soil. 

The  socialistic  idea  of  to  every  one  according  to  his  needs, 
has  to  contend  against  who  would  be  the  best  judge  of  those  needs. 
The  individual  himself  knows  best  what  he  needs,  so  both  judg- 
ment and  honesty  are  presupposed  where  they  are  not ;  and,  needs 
being  supplied,  there  is  an  end  of  effort. 

Lord  Bacon  wrote  that  "Men  in  their  innovations  should  fol- 
low the  example  of  Time,  which  innovateth  greatly,  but  quietly 
and  by  degrees  scarce  to  be  perceived."  There  are  cataclysms 
also  which  make  great  innovations  and  sometimes  the  quiet  kind 
have  been  the  cause  of  the  other  sort.  For  instance,  old  errors 
may  innovate  new  social  diseases  quietly  until  the  whole  fabric  is 
threatened  unless  a  revolution  comes. 

Macaulay*"  remarks  that  the  circumstances  which  have  the 
most  influence  on  the  happiness  of  mankind,  the  changes  of  man- 
ners and  morals,  the  transition  of  communities  from  poverty  to 
wealth,  from  ignorance  to  knowledge,  from  ferocity  to  humanity^ 
these  are  the  noiseless  revolutions,  not  of  armies,  senates,  treaties 
or  recorded  in  archives.  They  are  carried  on  in  every  school, 
church,  behind  ten  thousand  counters  and  at  ten  thousand  firesides. 
Nations  may  be  miserable  amidst  victories  and  prosperous  amidst 
defeats.  We  read  of  the  fall  of  wise  ministers  and  of  the  rise  of 
profligate  favorites ;  not  a  small  proportion  of  good  or  evil  is 
effected  by  a  single  statesman  as  compared  to  the  good  or  evil  of 
a  great  social  system. 

Buckle  claimed  that  reforms  were  often  attempted  prema- 
turely by  well-meaning  fools,  and  what  might  have  taken  place 

*'  History  Essays.  Vo..  I. 


SOCIOLOGY.  593 

naturally,  evolved,  worked  out,  has  thus  been  set  back  many  years. 
Narrow  reform  ideas  have  often  impeded  real  reforms. 

Wealth  has  not  accomplished  everything  in  the  world.  Much 
has  been  done  by  penniless  fanatics  working  upon  the  hopes  and 
fears  of  the  multitude. 

Ample  funds  do  not  guarantee  advance  in  anything,  for  the 
money  attracts  greedy  superficial  pretenders  and  may  become  the 
means  of  opposing  the  aims  for  which  the  funds  were  appropri- 
ated. Rome  has  had  gold  poured  in  upon  it  so  fast  it  could  not  be 
counted.  What  has  been  the  result?  The  smaller,  poorer  col- 
leges do  better  work  than  the  heavily  endowed  ones.  A  vast  re- 
search fund  will  inevitably  fall  into  the  hands  of  strugglers  for  it 
rather  than  those  who  could  use  it  to  the  best  advantage.  Those 
selected  for  aid  in  research  will  be  such  as  have  influence,  and 
these  will  spend  their  time  in  arrogantly  imposing  crude  ideas  and 
fighting  unofiBcial  meritorious  ones.  Just  as  official  science  has 
proven  to  be  a  curse.  Frank  S.  Billings,  of  Sharon,  Mass.,  had 
his  hog  cholera  investigations  stolen  by  official  biologists,  and 
they  abused  him  for  making  good  his  claims. 

Improvement  and  reform  is  more  often  an  incident  than  an 
mtended  result  of  progress.  Often  the  improvement  is  in  spite 
of  its  originators'  intentions.  As  when  newspapers  attack  wrongs 
to  seek  gain  for  themselves  and  are  as  apt  to  attack  the  right  for 
the  same  reason. 

A  priesthood  may  be  so  exempt  from  corruption  through  fav- 
oring circumstances,  such  as  coming  under  the  control  of  an  up- 
right bishop,  as  to  have  a  majority  of  good,  sincere,  devout  men, 
but  we  must  admit  that  under  unfavorable  circumstances  it  is  pos- 
sible for  the  majority  to  be  bad,  as  where  an  unprincipled  head  of 
the  priesthood  gathers  his  own  kind  about  him  and  opposes  the 
conscientious.  ''To  do  good  we  must  know  how  to  do  it,  and, 
like  everything  else  we  can  only  know  this  through  the  medium 
of  our  own  passions,  our  own  judgment,  our  own  ideas,  which  not 
infrequently  are  rather  as  correct  as  they  are  capable  of  being, 
than  as  they  ought  to  be."*^ 

By  a  rough  estimate  a  billion  and  a  half  of  people  are  at  pres- 

''  Manzoni.  op.  cit.,  Ch.  XXV. 


594  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND   HIS    MIND. 

ent  on  the  globe,  of  whom  about  75  per  cent  live  like  beasts  and 
only  ten  per  cent  are  fairly  civilized,  with  but  one  per  cent  living 
in  anything  like  comfort  and  enlightenment,  and  all  of  them  are 
contending  with  one  another  for  existence  to  a  greater  or  less 
extent. 

The  utter  absence  of  any  kind  of  a  government  is  common 
among  Asiatics,  a  sort  of  survival  of  the  solitary  or  family,  patri- 
archal rule,  where  there  has  been  failure  to  form  tribes  or  where 
once  formed  has  degenerated  into  the  single  family  control  again. 
Reclus  (Asia,  p.  222,  Vol.  i)  describes  the  Turkoman  absence  of 
government.  Such  people  are  practically  but  little  better  than 
apes,  they  may  imbibe  a  few  ideas  from  neighboring  nations,  but 
are  unskilled,  revengeful  and  simple,  like  American  savages,  or 
even  lower,  for  these  Indians  have  advanced  to  the  forming  of- 
tribes.  This  is  the  bHssful  state  to  which  anarchy  seeks  to  hand 
us.  But  many  of  these  anarchists  are  insane,  as  was  Louis  Lingg, 
who,  condemned  to  death  in  Chicago  for  the  Haymarket  rioting, 
succeeded  in  killing  himself  before  the  time  set  for  execution. 
Others  of  this  belief  are  half-educated  fanatics,  some  of  whom 
mean  well  but  are  misdirected  in  their  energies  and  ideas.  The 
various  leagues  to  protect  commerce,  such  as  the  Rhine  and  Hans- 
eatic,  or  for  mutual  defense,  as  in  Greece,  the  kingly,  free  state, 
oligarchy,  or  republic  when  simplified  mean  shall  one  rule,  two  or 
three,  or  shall  certain  parts  of  the  populace  rule,  and  who  is  to 
represent  them.  There  is  usually  the  greatest  reluctance  to  let- 
ting everybody  rule,  even  by  representation.  But  even  when 
everybody  is  supposed  to  be  represented  it  means  that  nobody  is 
represented  but  the  demagogue  who  steals  the  power. 

Some  steps  toward  social  advance  may  be  seen  in  the  oscilla- 
tions of  the  old-age  pension  legislation  in  various  countries.  In 
1896  a  royal  commission  in  England  reported  that  old-age  pen- 
sions were  impracticable,  and  no  very  great  effort  has  been  made 
to  make  them  otherwise.  Half  a  million  persons  at  an  expense  of 
three  million  pounds  per  annum  is  too  vast  a  scheme,  but  there  are 
ready  billions  for  vice  cheerfully. 

In  1899  an  old-age  pension  act  was  added  to  the  radical  legis- 
lation of  New  Zealand  and  in  New  South  Wales  in  1900. 


SOCIOLOGY.  595 

Simultaneously  with  such  humanity  to  the  aged  comes  the" 
statistical  announcement  that  there  is  a  lengthened  average  of 
human  life/* 

The  initiative  and  referendum,  by  means  of  which  the  people 
may  directly  institute  and  ratify  or  disapprove  of  legislation  and 
thus  escape  being  misrepresented,  has  been  long  in  use  in  Swit- 
zerland, and  Larned  gives  its  practical  workings  there  to  1894  and 
1898.  In  Minnesota  the  referendum  was  brought  into  practical 
use  in  1896  and  this  indicates  a  gradual  but  sure  extension  univer- 
sally of  like  measures  of  evolved  socialism  and  better  government. 
In  1898  the  constitution  of  South  Dakota  was  amended  by  the 
introduction  of  the  initiative  and  referendum.  In  Chicago  in  1891 
an  overwhelming  popular  vote  was  cast  in  favor  of  the  referen- 
dum and  municipal  ownership. 

Much  advance  in  sociology  lies  in  the  perfection  of  mechanism, 
using  the  word  perfection  in  a  relative  sense,  as  mechanism  and  its 
management  requires  a  higher  knowledge  of  nature.  Mankind 
grows  more  skilled  and  thoughtful  with  all  that  is  entailed  by 
being  compelled  to  study  machinery  based  upon  laws  of  physics 
and  chemistry,  for  these  latter  laws  must  be  to  some  extent  under- 
stood by  all  who  make  their  living  by  the  use  of  machinery.  A 
new  classification  of  intelligence  is  dawning  in  the  mechanical 
world  which  will  be  rated  higher  than  the  mere  ownership  of 
wealth  which  is  already  recognized  as  often  associated  with  low 
mental  qualities.  Finally  mechanical  knowledge  will  create  wealth 
and  power.  When  it  becomes  necessary  to  have  a  certain  amount 
of  scientific  information  to  secure  a  position  that  species  of  knowl- 
edge acts  as  a  stimulant  to  intelligence,  and  soon  we  have  a  class 
that  prides  itself  on  having  that  knowledge  and  being  skilled  in 
certain  lines,  and  soon  from  the  ranks  of  such  classes  step  up 
advanced  thinkers.  Necessity  impels  some  inventors  to  rack  their 
brains  for  new  and  labor-saving  apparatus.  Necessity  may  evolve 
a  means  of  protecting  the  inventor's  rights  to  his  invention. 

Old  dwellers  in  New  Orleans  remember  the  abominable  old 
volunteer  fire  engine  company  system  conducted  by  thieves,  row- 
dies, brawlers,  and  yet  tolerated  as  better  than  nothing.    It  gave 

"  Lamed  History,  Vol.  VI,  p.  342,  for  details  of  advances. 


596  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

way  to  the  present  mechanical  steam  engine  after  much  opposi- 
tion and  bloodshed. 

Ultimately  all  kinds  of  refuse  will  be  bought  from  houses. 
Now  it  is  thrown  out  and  enables  politicians  to  collect  pay  for 
pretending  to  cart  it  away.  In  New  York  the  privilege  of  sorting 
garbage  was  sold  and  nets  the  city  an  income.  People  are  likely, 
when  well  enough  organized,  to  make  money  out  of  what  they 
now  throw  away,  as  coal  tar  products  are  made  from  gashouse 
refuse. 

From  the  heterogeneous  to  the  homogeneous  in  all  things 
promises  a  social  system  to  grow  out  of  the  multitude  of  attempts 
and  failures  and  partial  successes  in  sociological  co-operation.  No 
one  can  foresee  how  or  when  they  may  be  united  any  more  than 
the  savage  Teutons  foresaw  their  feudal  system,  or  realized  that 
it  would  grow  by  the  grabs  of  grabbers  into  national  unity  and 
that  there  would  be  a  world-uniting  commerce  on  the  basis  of  ad- 
justment of  mutual  grabs,  becoming  more  refined,  from  open 
piracy  to  courteous  swindling  in  trade.  The  rules  of  the  game  set 
for  the  time  must  be  observed  and  new  methods  of  swindling  sup- 
plant the  old,  which  custom  has  outgrown.  An  old  speculating 
trip  for  a  sailing  vessel  in  trade  was  an  "adventure,"  and  losses 
were  as  apt  to  be  made  as  gains ;  finally  trade  developed  in  settled 
ways  and  routes  and  a  greater  assurance  of  profits  followed. 

There  were  misgivings  as  to  what  would  be  the  effect  of  con- 
stitutional provisions  for  militia  and  federal  arsenals,  but  these 
fears  proved  to  be  unfounded.  Contingencies  cannot  always  be 
foreseen  in  regard  to  what  does  and  what  does  not  menace  liberty. 
But  it  is  thoroughly  agreed  that  large  standing  armies  destroy 
liberty,  and  it  is  asserted  that  large  navies  do  not.  They,  however, 
are  liable  to  promote  naval  rings  who  seek  to  control  soft  places 
and  oppose  single-hearted  merit  because  envious  of  it.  Positions 
obtainable  by  intrigue  attract  designing  persons  who,  being  wholly 
intent  upon  hanging  on  to  a  high  salary,  are  not  likely  to  possess 
other  abilities,  but  are  more  than  likely  to  venomously  resent  any 
patriot  attracting  deserved  attention,  because  the  intriguers  are 
liable  to  suffer  eclipse,  so  they  band  together  to  destroy  whoever 
has  earned  positions  instead  of  securing  them  through  influence. 

The  warrior  instinct  is  wonderfully  deep  in  mankind  and  is 


SOCIOLOGY. 


597 


readily  cultivated  when  needed,  hence  America  does  not  need  a 
large  standing  army.  Most  men  are  soldiers  by  nature  and  readily 
take  to  army  training,  as  was  shown  in  the  civil  war.  During 
peace  times  football  games  afford  excuses  to  kick  one  another 
to  pieces.  The  military  spirit  born  of  savage  instincts  latent  in 
all  renders  civilization  skin  deep.  The  people  without  a  large 
standing  army  conserves  its  strength  by  favoring  productiveness. 
A  standing  army  eats  the  vitals  of  natural  growth,  and  is  ripe  for 
the  coup  d'etat  that  develops  Boulangers  and  Marchands,  whose 
fate  has  differed  from  Napoleon's  simply  because  the  French  peo- 
ple have  grown  a  little  more  enlightened.  The  isolation  and  in- 
dustrialism of  America  has  saved  it  from  the  kind  of  demagogues 
who  destroyed  Greece  and  many  a  European  government. 

The  fight  for  good  over  evil  is  a  hard  one  and  all  the  more  so 
from  Huxley's  standpoint  that  ''Ethical  nature,  though  born  of 
cosmical  nature,  is  necessarily  at  enmity  with  its  parent."  In 
plain  words,  the  desire  to  do  good  is  a  natural  evolution  from  the 
selfish  old  past,  and  this  inherent  selfishness  contends  against 
every  step  taken  to  benefit  the  race  directly. 

There  are  different  kinds  of  good,  and  Spencer  makes  an  elab- 
orate definition  of  its  constituents,  but,  however  originated,  the 
desire  to  do  good  exists  everywhere.  The  surest  form  is  in  the 
desire  to  do  good  to  one's  self,  but  after  all  that  is  the  colonial 
good,  the  general  benefit  sought  to  the  aggregation  of  units  com- 
posing one's  self,  and  the  highest  is  the  "secondary  ego,"  which 
substitutes  the  general  for  the  personal  good. 

Methods  and  ideas  differ  infinitely  and  two  ideas  may  clash 
while  each  was  intent  upon  its  theory  of  how  the  good  should  be 
accomplished.  It  is  further  complicated  by  hypocrisy  turning  to 
account  the  secondary  ego  of  others,  selfishness  profiting  by  gene- 
rosity. 

Spencer  notes  that  ''there  has  to  be  a  continually  changing 
compromise  between  force  and  right,  during  which  force  de- 
creases step  by  step  as  right  increases  step  by  step  and  during 
which  every  step  brings  some  temporary  evil  along  with  its  ulti- 
mate good."  Buckle  shows  that  the  laws  of  morality  may  be 
unchanged  for  ages,  but  knowledge  sets  us  free  and  gives  us 
the  genuine  article. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 
ANALOGY. 

A  glance  at  such  matters  as  heredity,  habits,  and  general  phy- 
siological functions  suffices  to  discover  the  parallelisms,  resem- 
blances, if  not  identities  in  modes  of  operation  of  living  things, 
and  as  houses  made  of  bricks  have  much  of  the  brick  properties  as 
one  made  of  wood  is  liable  to  burn,  so  nations  behave  as  the  indi- 
viduals composing  them,  for  the  most  part  allowing  a  certain  por- 
tion of  the  body  to  control  that  assumes  to  be  acting  in  the  inter- 
ests of  all  parts,  but  it  is  not  doing  so  any  more  than  the  sovereign 
cares  for  his  people  in  reality. 

In  other  chapters  we  have  passed  from  atoms  to  animals  and 
plants,  and  in  Natural  Analogies^  an  extended  argument  is  ven- 
tured to  the  effect  that  a  social  organism  depends  upon  its  tele- 
graph, railway,  steamship,  manufacturing  and  mercantile  systems, 
each  intent  upon  its  own  gain,  but  incidentally  working  together 
for  the  common  benefit,  just  as  the  different  organs  of  the  body 
do.  In  a  general  way  we  may  say  that  sociologically  the  mer- 
chants, bankers  and  brokers  are  intestines  and  do  not  eat  up 
everything  passing  into  their  custody  solely  because  they  cannot 
do  so.  Common  carriers  may  be  blood  vessels  and  lymphatics, 
laborers  and  soldiers  the  muscle  cells.  Rulers  merely  correlate  the 
visceral  workings,  and  so  legislators,  kings,  etc.,  correspond  to  the 
sympathetic  nervous  system ;  the  real  rulers  are  those  who  influ- 
ence  the  community  more  than  do  the  supposed  rulers. 

Plato's  model  republic  was  founded  upon  vague  correspond- 
ences between  mental  and  social  divisions,  and  Hobbe  pictured 
the  state  as  a  monster  Leviathan.  Herbert  Spencer  used  his  vast 
biological  knowledge  to  show  close  resemblances  between  the 
activities  of  society  and  that  of  cells.     He  holds  that  England 

*  American  Naturalist,  March,   1892. 

598 


ANALOGY.  599 

would  correspond  to  a  much  lower  vertebrate  form  than  the 
human. 

There  are  parallels  of  congestion  and  anemia  in  trade.  In- 
dustries may  die  for  want  of  supply.  The  co-operation  of  cells 
and  laborers  is  in  the  interest  of  the  colony.  If  one  cell  or  organ 
attempts  overgrowth  it  is  malignant  and  kills  itself  in  the  end  by 
parasitic  destruction  like  that  of  the  dodder.  The  boodler  poli- 
tician is  a  cancer  in  this  sense.  Some  nations  deliberately  place 
an  arrested  development  monstrosity,  as  a  cruel  imbecile,  on  theif 
thrones. 

The  social  like  the  individual  organism  is  in  constant  danger 
of  a  part  usurping  functions  greedily  and  destroying  the  entire 
colony  in  its  selfishness.  The  fine  brain  is  the  highest  and  the 
weakest,  the  first  to  succumb  to  disease  and  last  to  be  developed. 
So  the  highest  good  of  a  community  is  similarly  difficult  to  foster 
and  maintain. 

Metschnikoff  likened  inflammation  to  a  warfare  between 
micro-organisms  and  leucocytes.  The  news  of  the  arrival  of  an 
enemy  is  telegraphed  to  headquarters  by  the  vaso-motor  nerves 
and  the  blood  vessels  are  used  as  an  avenue  of  communication 
with  the  threatened  region.  When  the  invaders  are  established 
they  live  on  the  host  and  scatter  injurious  substances  which 
they  form.  The  active  leucocytes  attack  and  try  to  eat  the 
micro-organisms,  and  some  may  die  in  the  fight  and  form  pus  and 
an  abscess.  Defeat  of  the  leucocytes  means  sickness  or  death, 
victory  means  recovery.  In  our  bodies  there  is  a  standing  army 
of  movable  cells  quickly  concentrated  to  attack  any  foreign  foe 
which  may  appear. 

Agrippa  Menenius,  B.  C.  494,  used  the  comparison  of  the 
organs  of  a  body  revolting  against  one  another  with  resulting 
suffering  to  all  to  quiet  a  multitude  on  the  point  of  outbreak. 

Max  Miiller  says  this  fable  is  of  very  great  antiquity,  and  it 
is  found  among  the  Hindoos. 

It  is  not  the  volume  but  the  activity  of  money  that  counts. 
It  is  the  same  with  blood,  anaemia  compensated  by  quickened 
heart  action.  A  parallel  exists  in  lessened  circulation,  both  causes 
increasing  activity.  Why?  Hunger,  the  greater  molecular  at- 
traction, in  the  absence  of  surfeit. 


60O  THE    EVOLUTION    OP^    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

From  the  fact  that  the  brain  uses  up  more  blood  than  any- 
other  organ  it  may  be  inferred  that  when  a  social  organism  be- 
comes comparable  to  a  monkey  stage  of  development  there  may 
be  more  expended  in  thought  than  in  gluttony. 

Blood  vessel  vaso-motors  that  regulate  the  blood  supply  are 
the  telephones  and  telegraphs  of  mercantile  life.  In  primitive 
animals  the  blood  does  not  go  always  where  it  is  wanted  except 
by  accident,  just  as  the  old  sailing  vessels  went  out  on  "adven- 
tures," and  might  meet  with  good  exchange  or  bring  their  car- 
goes back.  There  was  no  directing  apparatus,  no  means  of  com- 
munication to  tell  the  congested  or  producing  points  where  trade 
would  be  good,  where  articles  were  wanted.  In  higher  forms 
the  goods  are  swiftly  transported  on  being  telegraphed  for,  or 
where  regular  demand  has  been  instituted.  A  vaso-motor  system 
acquaints  the  blood  vessel  with  the  nature  of  the  demand,  whether 
much  or  little  is  wanted,  near  or  far. 

The  separation  of  tribes  by  parting  or  by  bloodshed  and 
grouping  about  a  new  chief  is  comparable  to  the  amoeboid  split- 
ting and  the  new  nucleus  formation ;  also  there  is  a  resemblance 
to  parturition  by  disruption,  with  suffering  and  loss  of  blood. 

Tramps  may  be  likened  to  wandering  leucocytes  that  are 
wounded  and  imperfect,  and  there  may  be  organs  for  them  such 
as  the  spleen  in  which  they  are  colonized  and  renovated. 

Dr.  Daniel  G.  Brinton  is  quoted  as  treating  the  nation  as  an 
organism  like  the  human  body,  and  discussed  such  diseases  as 
render  it  incapable  of  self-preservation.  "That  according  to  his- 
tory the  average  life  of  a  nation  was  from  800  to  1,000  years,  its 
disintegration  for  the  most  part  being  due  to  moral  disease,  as 
corrupt  government,  or  priesth'ood,  though  nations  do  not  fail 
from  psychologic  cause."  The  etiology  of  the  diseases  of  nations 
he  thought  due  to  imperfect  nutrition,  poisons,  mental  coma,  and 
sexual  aberrations,  each  one  of  which  received  due  consideration 
from  the  speaker;  reviewing  the  causation  factors  in  the  health 
and  welfare  of  this  country.  Dr.  Brinton  believes  that  our  mode 
of  life,  use  of  stimulants  and  drugs  might  have  some  tendency 
toward  mental  coma. 

Buckle,  in  addition  to  noting  that  we  expect  men  to  be  gov- 
erned in  their  acts  by  the  state  of  the  society  in  which  they  occur. 


ANALOGY.  6oi 

says  that  the  entire  moral  conduct  is  likewise  routinized.  Not- 
withstanding the  many  incentives  the  crime  of  murder  occurs 
with  as  much  regularity  as  the  tides  and  seasons.  Quetelet  notes 
that  yearly  the  same  number  of  murders  occur  and  similar  in- 
struments are  employed  in  the  murder.  The  same  number  and 
kinds  of  crime  were  yearly  committed  in  France  between  1826 
and  1844,  ai^d  presumably  since,  in  proportion  to  the  population. 
Suicide  statistics  indicate  that  in  a  given  state  of  society  a  certain 
number  of  persons  must  put  an  end  to  their  own  existence.  Even 
the  average  of  marriages  in  England  bear  a  definite  relation  to 
the  price  of  breadstuffs  and  vary  with  the  average  earnings  of 
the  masses.  Memory  defects  appear  to  be  capable  of  prediction, 
for  yearly  the  same  number  of  letters  are  mailed  without  direc- 
tion. 

Blackstone  dates  the  time  of  memory  for  E,ngland  from  the 
reign  of  Richard  I,  as  we  date  that  of  individuals  about  the  fifth 
year.  The  first  race  consciousness  could  be  located  in  India  and 
Persia,  for  thence  came  the  earliest  records  we  possess. 

Hume  says:  "All  our  reasonings  concerning  matters  of  fact 
are  founded  on  a  species  of  analogy  which  leads  us  to  expect  from 
any  cause  the  same  events  which  we  have  observed  to  result  from 
similar  causes." 

Spencer^  speaks  of  society  as  an  organism  made  up  upon  lines 
comparable  to  those  of  the  parts  of  an  animal.  Hobbes  rudely 
likened  nations  and  mankind  to  a  Leviathan  with  his  crude  a^ 
tempts  to  describe  the  functions  and  parts  of  his  analogy,  but 
there  was  not  sufficient  knowledge  of  biology  in  his  times  to 
enable  him  to  see  what  would  have  surprised  him  in  the  correct- 
ne,ss  of  his  general  idea  and  the'  faultiness  of  his  use  of  it.  The 
wandering  amoeba  may  be  likened  to  the  nomad,  the  synamoeba 
to  the  family,  the  aggregation  of  cells  from  a  mother  cell,  differen- 
tiation gives  in  the  gastrula  forms  a  resemblance  to  tribal  control ; 
then  come  the  nerves  and  sense  organs  comparable  to  telegraph 
lines  and  sentinels ;  the  blood  vessels  afford  special  routes  for 
conveyance  of  nutrition,  as  better  roads  through  countries.  Spen- 
cer thinks  that  even  the  highest  nation  is  yet  lower  than  the 

'  Principles  of  Sociology,  Vol.  I,  p.  472. 


602  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

lowest  vertebrate  in  comparing  biological  with  governmental 
control. 

The  law  of  distribution  for  valves  in  the  veins  I  announced 
in  1881,  in  the  American  Naturalist,  as  alike  for  quadrupeds  and 
man,  showing  that  man  was  originally  a  four-footed  animal,  as, 
in  common  with  other  quadrupeds,  when  on  his  hands  and  feet 
his  perpendicular  veins  are  valved,  and  his  horizontal  veins  are 
not  valved.  So  this  marked  analogy  is  homology,  identity,  and 
Professor  Frederick  Starr  and  others  mention  it  as  a  strong 
proof  of  evolution. 

Tissues  work  by  stirs.  A  quiet  leader  is  displaced  by  an 
active  one,  even  though  he  may  not  be  as  good.  People  do  not 
realize  when  they  are  well  off.  Change  must  occur  to  notify  them 
of  anything,  change  is  necessary  to  feeling.  Regularity,  monot- 
ony, is  practically  death.  Consciousness  requires  activity  to  a 
changed  degree  from  the  usual.  The  female  is  attracted  by  dif- 
ferences from  the  ordinary,  as  tissues  demand  a  change.  A  stir 
is  craved  by  the  populace.  Excitement,  circuses,  anything,  rather 
than  being  bored  with  monotony.  People  are  proud  of  those  who 
make  a  stir.  Within  limits  changes  are  needed  to  maintain  life, 
but  the  lower  the  scale  of  existence  there  are  extremes  of  either 
great  routine  or  great  changes. 

Overhead  electric  wires  are  replaced  by  underground  ones, 
and  gradually  tunnels  gather  and  group  the  different  services. 
This  closely  resembles  the  evolution  of  the  spinal  cord,  which 
gathers  the  nerves  out  of  the  way  into  more  direct  bundles  pro- 
tected by  the  vertebrae,  and  the  blood  vessels  replace  the  less 
definite  method  of  nourishing  the  tissues  as  by  lacunae  instead  of 
tubes  in  some  of  the  invertebratesr  Obsolescing  organs  are  some- 
times converted  to  other  uses,  as  when  the  swimming  bladder  be- 
comes a  lung,  and  in  tearing  down  wires  they  may  be  used  for 
fences,  or  a  telegraph  line  may  be  used  for  telephoning. 

A  plant  may  be  extravagant  in  flower  production,  its  life  is 
like  that  of  the  animal,  a  constant  adjustment  to  surroundings. 
Plants  like  and  dislike  light  or  shade,  swamps  or  deserts,  heat  or 
cold.  Plants  are  colonies  of  vegetable  cells,  breathing,  eating, 
growing,  excreting ;  the  sap  is  the  blood.  Plants  develop  organs 
for  defence  or  to  assist  its  life  struggle.     The  dodders  are  mur- 


ANALOGY.  603 

derers  and  robbers  of  other  plants,  living  upon  them  and  sapping 
their  lives.  Insectivorous  plants  may  suffer  from  indigestion. 
Plants  have  diseases  such  as  fungi,  smut,  ergot,  rust,  on  potatoes, 
corn,  lilies,  rye,  hops,  wheat,  grapes.  Mimicry  is  resorted  to  by, 
some  plants  for  protective  purposes  or  to  entice  insects.  Vege- 
tation is  social  or  solitary,  plants  sleep  and  awake,  are  parasites 
or  mutualists,  enter  into  partnership,  co-operate  and  divide  labor, 
are  subject  to  the  influence  of  heredity,  habits  and  surrounding. 

Seed  and  pollen  meet  by  chance.  In  higher  animal  life  the 
deliberate  union  occurs.  Adventure,  chance,  was  the  early  voy- 
age method  for  ships;  now  there  is  planning  of  the  destination 
with  surer  results. 

J.  A.  Thompson^  describes  the  inter-relations  of  plants  and 
animals,  their  dependence  upon  surroundings,  the  struggle  for 
life,  their  armor  and  weapons,  the  cruelty  of  the  struggle,  their 
shifts  for  a  living,  insulation,  concealment,  parasitism,  rapid 
change  of  color,  protective  resemblances,  warning  colors,  mim- 
icry, masking,  combination  of  advantageous  qualities ;  their  sur- 
render of  parts  to  save  themselves ;  their  social  life,  partnerships, 
co-operation  and  division  of  labor ;  their  gregarious  life  and  com- 
bined action;  their  domestic  life,  love  of  mates,  love  and  care  of 
offspring;  their  industries,  hunting,  shepherding,  storing  and 
making  of  homes. 

Trees  of  a  special  variety  indicate  soil  of  a  certain  kind,  for 
instance,  pines  are  found  in  rocky  or  gravel  soil,  beeches  in  a 
chalky  soil,  elms  in  rich,  damp  soil,  oaks,  ashes  in  heavy  clay 
soil,  willows  and  poplars  in  marshy  soil ;  just  as  certain  animals 
thrive  best  under  certain  surroundings  and  the  community  of 
animals  of  all  kinds  with  man  is  seen  in  man  being  liable  to  re- 
ceive from  the  lower  animals,  and  to  communicate  to  them,  cer- 
tain diseases,  as  variola,  the  glanders,  hydrophobia,  etc.  Man 
has  internal  and  external  parasites,  as  do  other  animals,  and 
wounds  are  repaired  by  the  same  process  of  healing. 

Monkeys  are  born  in  almost  as  helpless  a  condition  as  our 
own  infants,  and  often  the  young  and  adults  differ  as  much. 
The  Cebus  azarse  is  liable  to  catarrh,  monkeys  suffer  from  apo- 

'  Study  of  Animal  Life,  1896. 


6o4  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

plexy,  inflammation  of  the  bowels  and  cataract  in  the  eye.  The 
younger  ones,  in  shedding  their  milk  teeth,  often  died  of  fever. 
Many  kinds  of  monkeys  are  fond  of  tea,  coffee,  liquors  and  to- 
bacco. 

C.  J.  Cornish*  describes  the  beds  of  animals,  their  sleep,  toi- 
lettes, society,  dislike  of  solitude,  etiquette,  military  tactics,  cour- 
age, sense  of  humor,  emotion  of  grief,  their  playing,  pageants, 
industries,  sicknesses,  materia  medica,  migrations,  etc. 

The  physics  of  intensity  decreasing  as  the  square  of  distance 
or  time,  is  seen  in  gratitude  to  the  physician  great  at  first,  dis- 
appearing ordinarily  with  recovery,  and  a  strong  impression 
strengthening  will  power,  sufficing  to  keep  a  drunkard  sober  till 
the  influence  passes,  also  in  the  fading  of  resolutions. 

The  adjustment  of  fibres  to  least  resistant  lines  enables  the 
easiest  and  best  work  to  be  secured  by  minds,  by  bodies,  and  by 
materials;  for  instance,  Stradivarius  made  his  violins  of  old 
choir-stalls  from  an  Italian  church.  It  may  be  that  with  the  rip- 
ening through  ozone,  etc.,  as  wines  do,  and  the  added  constant 
subjection  to  musical  vibrations  the  wood  of  these  box  stalls  ac- 
quired special  resonance  from  the  playing  of  string  and  wind  in- 
struments, through  the  centuries,  near  the  wood  from  which  the 
violins  were  made. 

Animals  are  comparable  to  machines  in  converting  vegetables 
into  animal  products  of  greater  value,  such  as  meat,  milk,  wool, 
muscular  power  from  raw  materials  derived  from  the  soil.^ 

Many  mechanical  principles  are  applicable  to  life,  not  only 
physically  but  mentally.  Hoppe-Seyler's  theory  of  albumen  in  a 
hydrated  medium  is  equivalent  to  the  need  of  water  in  joints,  res- 
piration, the  circulation  and  universally. 

The  parallelogram  of  forces  may  be  made  to  illustrate  that 
will  power  consists  in  the  resultant  of  impelling  desires  and  im- 
pulses. Conduct  can  be  analyzed  mathematically  if  all  the  com- 
ponents are  known.  Action  and  reaction  of  mental  states,  emo- 
tions and  feelings  are  always  equal  and  opposite,  allowing  also 
for  friction.     When  in  a  burst  of  emotionalism  one  throws  his 

*  Animals  at  Work  and  Play,  1896. 

^  M.  Miles,  American  Naturalist,  July,  1894. 


ANALOGY.  605 

purse  on  a  stage  or  altar  he  is  apt  to  upbraid  himself  later. 

The  correlation  of  vital  and  physical  forces  has  been  amply 
written  upon  by  Joule,  LeConte,  Grove,  and  others. 

There  is  an  incessant  compromise  everywhere  in  nature,  the 
line  of  least  resistance,  the  parallelogram  of  forces,  the  evolution 
of  human  conduct.  "We  do  the  best  we  can,"  remarked  Principal 
Dawson  of  McGill  University  to  me  when  I  asked  him  how  he 
could  oppose  Darwinism  with  his  able  intellect. 

The  hydrostatics  and  hydrodynamics  of  the  circulation  are  ap- 
parent throughout  physiology.  The  weak  heart  may  stop  beat- 
ing by  lying  on  the  right  side,  the  anaemic  person  suffers  from 
headaches,  bad  eye  sight  and  confusion  of  thoughts  when  stand- 
ing up,  but  the  reclining  position  relieves  these  states. 

When  you  live  long  in  one  place  and  speak  of  another  town 
in  which  you  formerly  resided  you  will  find  yourself,  upon  going 
to  a  third  location,  speaking  the  name  of  the  first  when  you  mean 
to  refer  to  the  one  you  just  left.  The  reason  for,  this  is  brain 
inertia,  the  tendency  to  maintain  the  feeling  of  established  rela- 
tions to  locations. 

The  duration  of  effects  of  stimuli  is  an  evidence  of  inertia, 
varying  with  persons,  and  the  reaction  to  stimuli  also  varies 
with  persons. 

There  are  such  things  as  the  overcoming  of  inertia  and  the 
acceleration  of  momentum  in  human  thought  and  in  sociological 
projects,  and  the  mind  is  subject  to  the  laws  which  create  inertia. 

Discontent,  dissatisfaction,  atomic  tension,  molecular  insta- 
bility seeking  other  or  higher  combinations.  The  fading  of 
friendship  which  in  youth  is  supposed  to  be  perpetual  is  like  the 
nascent  molecules  and  the  worn-out  compound  ready  to  disinte- 
grate. 

Desire  is  continuous  and  insatiable  because  when  an  atomic 
combination  is  formed  the  new  molecule  has  new  affinities  and 
seeks  new  combinations,  so  through  life  content  is  rare,  and  it 
is  the  rule  for  one  want  satisfied  to  be  followed  by  even  more 
imperative  wants,  as'  Daniel  Drew  stated,  "the  millionaire  is 
never  satisfied  till  he  has  half-a-million  more." 

The  two  hydrogen  atoms  can  be  likened  to  the  quantitative 
part  of  the  union  with  oxygen,  which  is  a  qualitative  atom  in 


6o6  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

forming  the  water  molecule.  That  is,  hydrogen  is  simpler,  and 
forms  the  bulk,  while  oxygen  is  more  active,  and  these  two  ele- 
ments represent  the  germ  and  sperm  cells,  and  the  H^O  formation 
resembles  the  fecundation.  This  likeness  may  be  carried  both 
ways  to  indicate  the  woman  as  a  molecule  for  the  infantile  nour- 
ishment and  the  male  as  the  more  active  and  higher  differentiated 
molecule,  the  union  between  which  results  in  another  application 
of  Spencer's  integration  of  the  heterogeneous  to  form  the  homo- 
geneous ;  if  the  derivation  of  oxygen  primarily  was  from  hydro- 
gen, by  changed  conditions  of  the  latter,  a  more  active  atom 
was  thus  evolved. 

Nitrogen  always  tending  to  escape  and  oxygen  always  tend- 
ing to  unite,  constitute  vital  phenomena. 

Man  is  undeniably  a  chemical  compound,  an  association  of 
organic  and  inorganic  molecules,  and  integrated  into  a  complex 
which  may  be  called  also  a  molecule.  His  symmetry  is  analogous 
to  that  of  crystals. 

Lester  F.  Ward^  holds  that  chemical  elements  have  evolved 
from  simpler  constituents  in  much  the  same  manner  as  the  inor- 
ganic compounds  are  formed.  These  latter  form  the  continuation 
of  a  uniform  process  of  evolution  varied  in  its  character  only  by 
the  conditions  of  temperature  affecting  the  globe  at  the  period 
when  these  substances  were  respectively  formed  upon  it,  and  the 
organic  compounds  are  prolongation  of  this  law  under  the  greatly 
lowered  temperatures  of  the  earth's  crust  after  its  formation.  The 
production  of  aggregates  of  higher  orders  of  complexity  through 
the  recompounding  of  units  of  lower  degrees  of  simplicity. 
Throughout  the  scale  the  molecules  constituting  each  progres- 
sively prove  complex  unit,  exhibit  increase  of  mass,  with  decrease 
of  stability. 

Helen  C.  De  S.  Abbott  has  an  interesting  paper  on  the  com- 
parative chemistry  of  higher  and  lower  plants,'^  wherein  she  takes 
the  ground  that  as  the  evolutionary  doctrine  has  shed  so  much 
light  upon  biology  it  will  also  enlighten  us  concerning  the  evolu- 
tion of  chemicals  into  plants  and  other  organic  life. 

•American  Naturalist,  Dec,  1882. 
'American  Naturalist,  Aug.  and  Sept.,  1887. 


ANALOGY.  607 

Felix  Le  Dantec,®  in  his  resume  et  conclusions,  says : 

To  establish  the  parallelism  between  physiological  and  psy- 
chlogical  activities  we  have  unique  points :  That  atoms  have  con- 
sciousness fixed  and  unchanged  in  a  determined  space.  This  con- 
sciousness continues  through  the  molecules  to  the  plastic  sub- 
stances into  the  superior  condition  of  th^  nervous  system.  He 
derives  from  this  the  conclusion  that  psychic  studies  are  useless 
that  ignore  these  material  conceptions,  as  they  will  not  lead  to 
the  truth. 

Cells  act  as  selfishly  as  their  owners  and  the  analogies  of 
nature  ally  the  egoism  of  man  and  animals  to  the  chemical  affini- 
ties upon  which  it  depends.  The  cause  of  the  selfishness  of  all 
animated  nature  lies  in  the  chemical  affinities  from  which,  step  by 
step,  that  selfishness  was  derived,  and  remains  scarcely  changed. 
The  CHNO  and  other  added  atoms  being  together  through  their 
mutual  grasp,  and  in  this  blind  grasp  of  atoms  they  take  from 
their  surroundings  that  for  which  they  have  affinity.  Cells  mu- 
tually adhere  for  the  same  reason,  and  so  do  social  organisms, 
civilized  man,  society  and  nations. 

One  very  common  fallacy  is  that  eventually  man  will  live  on 
concentrated  chemical  food  when  a  glance  at  his  make-up  would 
show  that  millions  of  years  would  be  required  to  produce  a  much 
less  radical  change  in  his  feeding  methods.  The  cooking  of  food 
makes  his  teeth  imperfect  and  his  digestion  less  hardy,  but  a  great 
amount  of  debris  is  needed  for  intestinal  activity,  just  as  the 
chicken  must  have  gravel. 

We  have  chemical  ingesta  in  whisky,  opium,  morphine,  etc., 
and  it  debases  rather  than  nourishes,  though  it  may  temporarily 
act  as  a  food.  We  have  chemicals  that  are  used  as  or  with  foods, 
but  their  effects  are  either  undesirable  or  negative. 

Patent  medicine  gulpers  are  chemical  eaters,  and  they  do  not 
thrive. 

Contemplating  the  meat  eating,  fruit  eating  and  vegetable 
eating  teeth  and  digestive  apparatus  of  man,  he  is  not  likely  to 
be  anything  but  an  omnivore  for  ages  to  come,  possibly  then  he 
may  eat  less  meat  or  none  at  all,  but  chemicals,  never. 

®Le  Determinisme  Biologique  et  la  Personalite  Consciente,  Paris,  1897. 


6oS  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

There  is  no  absolute  from  which  and  to  which  we  can  refer 
everything.  Things  are  Hghter,  warmer,  farther  fhan  other 
things,  but  there  is  no  gas  so  Hght,  no"  heat  so  great,  no  distance 
so  far  but  that  there  may  be  Hghter,  hotter,  farther  things  con- 
ceived by  the  mind. 

The  earth  stands  still  to  us,  but  moves  with  reference  to  the 
sun,  and  while  the  sun  is  stationary  to  its  planets  both  sun  and 
planets  move  about  a  remote  central  sun. 

Trains  side  by  side  going  at  the  same  speed  are  stationary 
with  relation  to  each  other.  If  one  passes  the  other  the  one 
passed  relatively  goes  backward  to  the  one  that  passes  it. 

Up  is  down  to  opposite  peoples  on  the  globe,  and  both  are 
relatively  right  and  wrong  at  the  same  time  in  claiming  to  have 
their  heads  up.  Any  mode  of  life  adjusted  to  any  surroundings, 
any  odors,  however  strong,  any  color  of  light,  may  become  ac- 
cepted as  the  normal  one.  You  may  live  in  a  grist  mill,  or  near 
a  boiler  factory,  and  sleep  quietly  till  the  machinery  stops.  A 
countryman  finds  city  noises  intolerable,  as  the  city  man  cannot 
endure  the  death-like  quiet  of  the  country. 

If  you  ascend  an  inclined  plane  the  houses  seem  out  of  per- 
pendicular. A  false  perspective  is  created  by  architects  in  some 
small  churches  in  Italy  to  give  the  appearance  of  the  choir  being 
far  off  by  shortening  the  pillars  at  the  end  of  the  church.  The 
Parthenon  and  St.  Peter's  are  constructed  with  regard  to  relative 
parts  and  distances  to  produce  perspective  effects. 

We  judge  by  comparisons,  a  relative  matter.  Heights  are  rel- 
ative to  the  eye.  Something  must  be  a  means  of  measurement, 
and  to  enable  any  idea  of  sizes  in  a  picture  something  must  be 
introduced  to  enable  relative  comparison  to  be  made,  a  man  or 
animal,  otherwise  a  hill  might  appear  like  a  mountain  or  a  lake 
like  a  small  pond. 

Getting  ''turned  around"  is  due  to  failure  to  notice  the  turns 
in  your  voyage,  and  regarding  the  relation  of  the  two  places  the 
starting  point  and  destination  with  reference  to  an  error  in  your 
course. 

Purgatory  is  mentioned  as  paradise  to  those  in  hell,  and  hell 
to  those  in  paradise. 


ANALOGY.  609 

When  little  things  annoy  us  it  is  because  there  are  no  big 
things  to  bother  us.  When  a  real  calamity  occurs  it  obliterates 
the  little  annoyances, 

A  man  with  a  vast  income  in  California  drowned  himself  when 
his  losses  reduced  him  to  the  necessity  of  living  on  $50,000  a 
year.  A  tramp  would  be  overjoyed  to  find  a  ten-dollar  bill.  A 
long  litigation  resulted  in  $30,000  being  given  to  a  plaintiff  with 
heart  disease  who  expired  from  the  excitement.  Reaction  from 
excitement  can  produce  apathy.  The  refugees  from  Martinique 
who  escaped  the  Pelee  volcano  and  lost  their  families  were  so 
dazed  that  they  spoke  to  the  people  of  Fort  de  France  as  though 
the  eruption  and  its  effects  were  indifferent  matters. 

A  great  fuss  was  made  over  the  loss  of  the  first  American  in 
the  war  with  Spain,  and  later  the  news  of  hundreds  dying  in 
Cuba  and  the  Philippines  attracted  little  general  attention. 

Hippocrates  said  a  severe  pain  would  dull  the  lesser  pain. 
Martyrs  in  their  ecstasy  have  appeared  to  be  insensible  to  torture. 

Morality  seems  relative,  for  a  mother  will  lie  to  save  her  son's 
credit,  and  one  deceives  to  befriend  a  loved  one.  Some  million- 
aire socialists  have  advanced  ideas,  but  the  size  of  their  wealth 
influences  their  sociological  notions,  A  millionaire  spoke  before 
a  New  York  legislative  committee  about  taxing  such  men  as  Van- 
derbilt  out  of  existence.  Another  who  had  ten  million  dollars 
thought  that  sum  was  moderate,  but  all  over  that  amount  was 
wrong,  and  that  Vanderbilt  should  be  hung  for  retaining  so 
much. 

Wundt  brought  Weber's  or  Fechner's  law  of  the  increase  of 
stimulus  required  to  produce  sensation  under  the  head  of  rela- 
tivity, as  instancing  that  our  sensibility  is  of  differences  and  is 
not  absolute. 

We  regard  a  room  as  darker  than  it  is  on  coming  into  it  from 
the  light,  and  emerging  from  the  darkness  a  strong  light  may 
blind  for  a  while,  as  too  much  suddenly  presented  knowledge 
may  bewilder.  Feeling  is  so  relative  that  our  sorrows  lessen  if 
we  find  greater  sufferers  than  ourselves  unless  sympathy  is 
blunted.  Over-stimulation  of  the  senses  may  cause  subsequent 
disgust.     Disciplining  desires  prolongs  comfort. 

Armored  animals  were  many  in  ancient  geological  periods, 


6lO  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

such  as  ganiods  and  the  armadillo.  Men  abandoned  armor  when 
speed  and  skill  made  it  useless.  Skilled  smaller  unprotected  ani- 
mals killed  off  the  armored  knights  of  animal  life. 

When  Chicago  was  a  srnall  place  of  300,000  there  was  a  char- 
acter to  it  which  it  losj  in  its  subsequent  two  million  of  popula- 
tion. Boston,  with  half  a  million,  preserved  much  of  its  original 
thinking  ability,  but  its  expansion  threatens  to  make  it  as  mush-* 
roomy,  heartless  and  commercial  as  Chicago.  These  places  may 
pass  through  the  assimilating  stages  as  Europe  did  in  the  middle 
ages  and  emerge  with  something  resembling  a  sociological  brain. 

Till  a  time  is  ripe  events  may  not  occur.  In  chemistry  certain 
molecular  arrangements  are  possible  only  when  a  definite  group- 
ing of  atoms  has  been  reached.  So  with  the  spermatozoon  de- 
pending upon  the  ripening  of  the  ovum.  The  child  cannot  think 
like  the  man.  And  the  masses  have  to  be  brought  to  a  point  of 
development  before  ideas  for  their  welfare  are  possible  with  them. 

Low  organisms  whose  few  cells  were  nearly  alike  in  function 
inay  be  compared  to  a  savage  tribe.  The  barbarous  or  absolute 
monarchy,  the  oligarchy  or  boss  rule  of  America  is  equivalent  to 
a  majority  of  the  cells  having  no  nervous  system  contact.  An 
ideal  republic  would  be  such  form  as  had  all  its  cells  in  touch 
with  its  brain,  which  while  it  rules  the  body  should  get  its  power 
to  do  so  from  the  body.  No  government  is  a  republic  till  it  has 
ihe  initiative  and  referendum. 

The  centralizing  steps  are  inevitable ;  in  an  ascending  scale  of 
animal  life  we  find  the  lower  centers  constantly  passing  under 
control  of  the  higher  to  more  intelligently  correlate  the  body. 
Trusts  are  thus  evolutionary  outcomes,  however  much  misery 
they  may  create  at  first;  they  centralize  for  their  own  greedy 
€nds,  but  the  independent  organs  now  become  controlled  in  the 
interests  of  their  master. 

When  in  a  certain  line  of  reptiles  a  tail  drops  off,  as  with 
the  frog,  then  higher  development  is  unusual,  but  the  tailed 
batrachia  may  go  on  developing.  That  is,  when  a  people  become 
civilized  the  next  step  seems  to  be  degeneracy.  As  the  Cossacks 
have  all  the  potencies  for  future  development  and  are  really  no- 
mads, metaphorically  they  are  still  tailed,  and  may  grow  into  the 


ANALOGY.  6ll 

future  high  race.  The  death  rate  for  various  reasons  increases 
faster  than  the  birth  rate  with  civilization,  mainly  due  to  preven- 
tion of  increase,  so  that  the  future  nations  are  to  come  from  the 
progeny  of  the  neglected  lower  classes  of  today  who  are  prolific 
enough  to  promise  to  inherit  the  earth  hereafter,  and  in  turn  they 
will  be  overcivilized,  decay  and  be  supplemented  by  others  whom 
they  will  look  down  upon  socially. 

Spencer's  instability  of  the  homogeneous  and  reintegration  of 
the  heterogeneous  predicts  the  settlement  of  Africa,  China  and 
South  America  by  the  various  Aryan  branches,  as  German, 
French,  English,  Russian,  forming  new  nations  "in  endless  dis- 
integrations and  reintegrations." 


CHAPTER  XX. 
CONCLUSION. 

The  preceding  chapters  have  been  arranged  with  regard  to 
the  modern  pedagogic  principle  that  the  logical  grouping  is  not 
usually  the  best  one  for  ready  comprehension  of  a  subject.  Fur- 
ther, it  was  kept  in  view  that  all  knowledge  is  relative,  that  a 
person  may  be  well  versed  in  one  special  branch  and  be  wofuUy 
ignorant  in  other  respects.  It  is  impossible  to  cover  all  fields  of 
learning,  though  the  bane  of  many  philosophical  writings  is  an 
air  of  arrogant  assumption.  And  even  though  one  after  another 
many  fields  may  be  traversed  we  cannot  avoid  growing  rusty  in 
details  though  much  generalizing  power  may  remain. 

Max  Muller^  suggests  that  where  academic  co-operation  is 
impossible  the  next  best  thing  is  that  a  scholar  eminent  in  his  own 
department,  and  who  knows  what  sound  learning  means,  should 
for  once  step  boldly  out  of  his  own  domain,  and  take  an  inde- 
pendent survey  of  the  preserves  of  his  neighbors.  There  is,  no 
doubt,  considerable  risk  to  the  bold  adventurer.  He  is  sure  to 
be  called  an  interloper,  an  ignoramus,  a  mere  dilettante;  but 
whatever  accidents  he  meets  with  himself,  the  subject  is  sure  to  be 
benefited.  It  has  often  been  said  that  a  traveler  who  spends  a  few 
days  in  a  country  observes  things  which  never  strike  the  residents, 
and  it  is  quite  intelligible  that  a  man  who  once  knows  what  it  is 
to  know  anything  thoroughly,  should  in  surveying  a  new  field  see 
things  which  from  being  too  familiar,  have  failed,  to  arouse  the 
attention  of  the  ordinary  student. 

"We  have  glanced  at  the  contracting  earth  thrusting  mountain 
ranges  as  wrinkles  in  its  surface  above  a  hot  sea,  and  at  the  ap- 
pearance of  plant  and  animal  life  changing,  developing  or  retro- 
grading, availing  of  favoring  circumstances  to  survive  or  through 
unfavorable  conditions  perishing.    The  laws  of  survival  or  degen- 

^  Prehistoric  Antiquities  of  the  Indo-Eiiropeans,  Cosmopolis,  Sept.  1896. 

612 


CONCLUSION.  613 

eracy  being  applicable  to  all  living  things,  whether  plant,  ani- 
mal or  man.  We  have  visited  in  imagination  the  ranges  where 
separate  groups  of  men-like  apes  and  speechless  ape-like  men 
have  evolved  from  lower  quadrupedal  forms.  We  can  conceive 
of  the  high  Pamir  plateaux  surrounded  by  glacier  peaks  afford- 
ing climatic  and  other  conditions  favorable  to-  a  superior  Asiatic 
race  the  Aryans  who,  with  the  Semites,  similarly  originated  to  the 
South  in  the  Persian  Highlands  spread  over  and  dominated  the 
earth  and  all  other  races.  A  pure  race  can  hardly  be  said  to 
exist  with  the  facilities  for  mixture  in  all  ages,  whether  historic 
or  prehistoric.  The  preponderance  of  evidence  being  that  in  the 
north  of  Europe  and  Asia  the  Aryans  have  a  Semitic  strain, 
while  tO'  the  south  the  Semites  have  been  more  or  less  mixed  with 
Aryans.  Races,  such  as  the  Egyptians,  did  not  preserve  enough 
of  the  Aryan  or  Semite  inheritance  to  survive  as  races ;  they  have 
reverted  like  the  yellow  dog  to  jackal  ancestry. 

The  middle  ages  in  Europe  teach  us  how  man  in  some  cases 
struggled  up  out  of  bestial  ignorance  and  slavery,  against  the 
opposition  of  his  own  kind  who  profited  by  herding  their  fellows 
as  swine  or  sheep.  We  see  in  Russia  today  this  abject  submis- 
sion of  herds  of  animal  men  and  in  Turkey  the  sultan's  anxiety  to 
keep  his  subjects  in  total  ignorance.  In  Europe  the  same  old  clutch 
upon  brains  and  purses  has  been  practiced  by  church  and  state, 
with  here  and  there  hysterical  attempts  at  freedom.  America 
probably  has  achieved  the  highest  point  of  intellectual  emanci- 
pation, but  the  same  old  greed,  hypocrisy  and  cunning  is  at  work 
trying  to  stem  the  current  of  advance,  trying  to  degrade  public 
service,  public  instruction,  not  merely  through  malevolence  and 
mistaken  zeal  but  because  there  is  money  to  be  made  by  organ- 
izing to  rob  and  enslave,  and  no  money  tO'  be  made  but  much  to 
be  lost  by  opposing  cruelty  and  oppression.  Vested  interests  are 
sure  to  be  encountered  where  brutalities  are  antagonized.  Preach- 
ers "cannot  afford"  to  denounce  the  modern  piracy  among  the 
merchants  of  their  congregation.  They  are  safer  among  the  plat- 
itudes they  are  paid  to  preach.  Reforms,  if  they  come  at  all, 
must  come  naturally,  and  through  differentiation  and  develop- 
ment of  intellect  usually  bent  upon  gain.    The  thief  has  to  pay  so 


6l4  THE    EVOLUTION    OF    MAN    AND    HIS    MIND. 

much  for  police  protection  that  he  concludes  to  become  honest, 
as  it  no  longer  pays  to  be  otherwise,  and  he  finds  that  the  time 
has  arrived  when  "honesty  is  the  best  policy."  And  much  of  the 
real  advance  of  the  world,  commercially,  especially,  has  been 
along  just  such  lines.  Habit  and  heredity  finally  establish  types 
and  in  the  artizan  and  other  classes  we  find  characters  who  are 
organically  upright,  as  far  as  their  intelligence  permits.  But 
dissolution,  or  the  falling  away  of  superstructural  circumstances, 
reveal  whether  this  uprightness  is  solidly  based  or  not.  Changed 
conditions  constantly  surprise  us  by  what  they  strip  away  from 
character. 

Since  there  is  evolution  at  all  it  is  a  common  supposition  that 
all  things  evolve ;  that  is  grow  better,  improve.  The  facts  are  that 
few  things  comparatively  are  temporarily  exempt  from  retro- 
grade development.  The  bulk  of  mankind  is  still  savage,  ignor- 
ant and,  of  course,  superstitious.  Even  in  so-called  civilized  so- 
ciety, the  clothing  and  customs  with  an  imitative  ability,  such 
as  the  chimpanzee  has  when  he  uses  knife  and  fork,  con- 
stitute the  covering  of  savagery.  A  war,  a  pestilence,  con- 
flagration, politics,  being  placed  in  charge  of  the  sick  in- 
sane and  paupers  with  the  public  funds  for  their  care  deter- 
mine how  much  of  the  brute  and  how  much  of  the  higher  type 
of  man  there  may  be  present.  And  when  an  unsophisticated  but 
honest  reformer  appeals  to  the  public  heart  and  conscience  to  make 
things  better  and  is  laughed  at  by  this  same  public,  which  really 
enjoys  the  discomfiture  of  the  fool  for  being  a  Don  Quixote,  he 
then  comes  to  realize  that  maybe  he  was  born  too  soon.  Balzac's 
father  pointed  to  the  crucifix  as  the  fate  of  reformers.  Even 
though  doctrines,  such  as  are  accredited  to  Buddha,  Christ  and 
Mohammed  may  be  accepted,  they  become  perverted  in  time  by 
the  money  getters,  the  priestly  exploiters,  and  the  Greek  church  in 
Russia  is  not  alone  in  this  perversion. 

As  to  a  coming  social  revolution  that  will  make  all  men  broth- 
ers, the  race  is  altogether  too  heterogeneous  to  admit  of  more  than 
a  few  attaining  the  highest  intellectual  development  that  such  an 
ideal  state  would  imply.  And  it  is  likely  that  these  few  will  be 
scattered,  as  they  always  have  been,  among  the  masses,  their  la- 


CONCLUSION.  615 

bors  unappreciated  when  alive,  but  remaining  more  or  less  ef- 
fective after  their  deaths.  All  to  what  end?  Quien  sabe!  The 
philosopher  watches  the  game  as  a  spectator,  and  regrets  that  he 
is  forced  to  participate  in  it.  He  dares  to  think  and  to  express 
his  thoughts,  but  must  keep  out  of  the  way  of  those  who  try  to 
kill  off  reason  with  the  clubs  of  assertion  and  authority  in  the 
interests  of  enslavers  of  body  and  mind. 


UNIVERSITY  or  CALirORNIA  LIBRARY 
BERKELEY 

Return  to  desk  from  which  borrowed 
This  book  .-fmiE  or.  the  last  date  stamped  below. 


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